


Always In The Wake

by RedRowan



Series: Stars and Horns [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Matt Murdock, Canon Disabled Character, F/M, Female Matt Murdock, Rule 63, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, girl!Matt Murdock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-29 20:17:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6391768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedRowan/pseuds/RedRowan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Steve Rogers wakes up after seventy years in the ice, he's lost in the New York of 2012.  The only place he feels at home is a run-down gym in Hell's Kitchen.</p><p>He's not expecting to meet a blind girl with suspiciously good fighting skills there.</p><p>Over the years, they come together, always after one disaster or another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. After Loki

**Author's Note:**

> This little fic started out as a love letter for my lovely commenters over on Not Done Growing Up, who had a LOT of enthusiasm for a possible Mattie/Steve relationship. And then it turned into a way to get some catharsis after the emotional bludgeoning dealt by Daredevil Season 2. So, thank you to all the commenters, you're all wonderful!
> 
> It's probably clear from context, but this is NOT part of The Boxer's Daughter continuity. It's...an AU of an AU, if you will.

When Steve wakes up, the woman who greets him is…wrong. Everything about her is wrong, from the too-long, too-flowing hair, to the too-tight skirt. But the most obvious detail is (he’ll never admit this) her bust. He can see the line of her brassiere through her shirt, holding her breasts at an odd angle that he’s never seen on a lady.

And the game on the radio is from May 1941, and Steve knows that whoever this woman is, everything about her is a lie.

So he confronts her, and soldiers come into the room, and he runs.

Bursting out into the street, nothing looks right - not the cars, not the buildings, not the people. He’s cornered in Times Square (more lights, brighter colours, billboards replaced with movie screens), and a black man with an eyepatch tells him he’s been asleep for almost seventy years.

_I was supposed to take Peggy dancing._

“You going to be OK?” asks the man.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Yeah, I just…I had a date.”

It’s 2012.

Fury gives him the files on the Howlies, and Steve reads about the lives and deaths that he missed. Junior Juniper, killed in action, 1946. Dum-Dum Dugan, deceased (cancer), 1966.

And Peggy Carter. Married, 1949. Two children, born 1953 and 1958. Grandchildren. He reads about her career, from heavily redacted files. SSR agent, first Director of SHIELD. And her current address: Washington, DC. 

She had a life, a career, everything she could have wanted. She put him behind her, and he has no right to ask to come back into her life.

Fury grumbles about the mess in Times Square, and before Steve knows it, he’s dressed in an Army uniform, meeting the President, who says “Welcome back, Cap.” Steve puts on the smile he learned when touring with the USO, and is gracious and humble as the photos are taken.

An agent is assigned to catch him up on seventy years of history; Steve learns about the end of the war, the atomic bomb (“Let me guess - Howard Stark?”), the start of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination, the Civil Rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, the end of the Cold War…

Steve’s starting to sense a pattern in his history lessons.

Fury sets him up in an apartment near the SHIELD building off Times Square. Steve takes walks around the city, bringing his sketchpad, and documents the changes he sees. Sometimes, he’ll sit in a coffee shop or in a park, and draw from memory. There are pages of his sketchbook dedicated to Peggy, to Bucky, to the Howlies…

After a few weeks, he’s not surprised any more by the fashions or the bright lights or the aggressive attitudes. But New York still doesn’t feel like home.

He tries to train in the gym in the SHIELD building, but the shiny, brightly-coloured equipment feels alien to him, and he can’t stand the agents staring at him.

He finds the gym on one of his walks. It’s a few blocks down from Times Square, in the neighborhood he knew as Hell’s Kitchen, but apparently nobody calls it that anymore. There’s a sheen of respectability to the neighborhood now, but the gym feels lived-in, a remnant of a time before. Steve pays the owner to use the gym after hours. He breaks the heavy bag on the first night, and is forced to ask Fury to send a replacement in the morning. Fury doesn’t say anything, but when Steve goes back that night, there are four bags waiting for him on the floor.

The girl comes in on the third night.

“Uh, hello?” she says, breaking Steve out of the peaceful mindlessness he finds when he punches the bag.

“Uh, hi,” he says, turning around. She’s standing by the door, her head cocked and her brow furrowed, wearing dark glasses and holding a red and white cane. _What does a blind girl - woman - do in a boxing gym?_ But she’s got a bag slung over her shoulder, and under her leather jacket she’s wearing clothes like the ones he saw on the female agents at the SHIELD gym, so she must be here to train. “Are you - can I help you - miss?”

“I was about to say the same thing,” she says. “Fogwell know you’re here?”

“Yeah, I, uh, made an arrangement with him.”

“Oh.” She’s using her cane to navigate, until it makes contact with the bench, and she puts her bag down.

“And, uh, yourself?”

“Fogwell lets me train here after hours.” Oh. Would have been nice if Fogwell had mentioned that.

“That’s nice of him,” says Steve, for want of something better to say.

“Yeah.” She’s shrugging off her jacket, and then her shirt, and Steve has to look away for a moment, because he might have gotten used to how little is left to the imagination by women’s clothing these days, but he’s not used to just seeing a woman in her brassiere in front of a total stranger. The girl looks completely unconcerned, but the corner of her mouth turns up as she takes off her glasses and starts wrapping her hands. Steve almost offers to help her, but her movements have the automatic grace of long practice, and he decides that she must know what she’s doing. She’s pretty, with dark hair and hazel eyes, and without her glasses, she looks younger than Steve originally thought, probably a few years younger than him. _No, she’s seventy years younger than you._

“I’m Steve,” he says, to break the silence.

“Mattie,” she says, standing up. She holds out her hand, and he shakes it.

“Do you - need any help?”

“Hold the bag for me?” She moves across the room without his help, so he assumes she knows where the bag is.

“Sure.” He positions himself behind the bag, but she pauses and runs her fingertips over the surface. She sniffs delicately. “Everything OK?”

“New bag,” she says suspiciously.

“How can you tell?”

“Smells different. Fogwell hasn’t changed the bag in years.”

“Yeah, uh, there was an accident with the last one…” Steve glances at the row of bags on the floor. “There are some extras over there - I mean, to your right.”

“Extras…? You planning on destroying more of them?”

“I didn’t say it was me.”

“Logical conclusion,” she says, and she grins in a way that reminds Steve of Bucky, all easy charm. She throws a punch, and Steve holds the bag. Her form is perfect, her movements elegant, and Steve lets himself admire the lean lines of her body as she attacks the bag. She reminds him of the female agents he sees at SHIELD, and for a moment, he wonders if Fury sent her to chaperone him. But Fury already has an agent tail him whenever he leaves the building, so what would be the point in sending this girl in?

She thanks him for holding the bag as she steps away to get a drink of water.

“So, where’d you learn all that?” he asks.

“Around. My dad was a boxer - he used to train here.”

“He taught you to fight?”

She shakes her head, smiling. “No. Never wanted me to set foot in a ring.” She shrugs. “But you pick up stuff anyway.”

There’s more to that story, Steve can tell. _Someone_ taught her.

She moves toward the row of bags on the floor.

“Normally I go through my katas now,” she says, starting to stretch.

“Your what?”

“Katas. They’re - um - martial arts patterns? It’s an easy way to train without sparring.”

“Oh, uh, let me get those out of your way…” He picks up one of the bags.

“What?”

“The bags.”

“Oh, right.” She cocks her head, listening to him move the bags. He lets her know when he’s cleared the floor for her.

She starts on her katas, and Steve’s reminded of Jim Morita teaching the Howlies judo. It’s like shadow-boxing, and she looks dangerous. And beautiful. Steve decides to give her some space, and returns to the bag.

She’s still going when he calls it a night. She says goodbye with a little wave in his general direction before shadow kicking what looks like three opponents.

There is _definitely_ more to her story than what she’s telling.

Two days later, she’s at the gym when he gets there, working on the heavy bag.

“Hi, Mattie,” he says.

“Hey, Steve, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Wouldn’t happen to be Steve _Rogers_ , would it?”

Steve’s not sure if he’s disappointed or not that she knows. “How’d you know?”

“Well, I’m not sure if they had them in the forties, but we have these things called videos now? That come with sound?” She’s grinning.

“Yeah, we called them talkies,” he says sarcastically.

“I thought you sounded familiar last time. And there aren’t that many people who can pick up two heavy bags at once. So I found the video of you meeting the President.” She makes it sound easy, like it was nothing. Maybe it was, he’s not sure how hard it would be. “So, what’s Captain America doing in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen?”

“I thought people don’t call it that anymore.”

“You do if you grew up here.”

“I’m staying over by Times Square. I don’t like the gym there, so I found this place instead. I like it. It’s…”

“Old-fashioned?”

“Honest.”

She cocks her head, breathes in deep. “Yeah. It is.”

“So, can I ask _you_ a question?”

“I wasn’t born blind,” she says with a smile.

“That wasn’t the question.”

“Really?”

“Not even in the top five.” He has a lot of questions for her.

“Hm,” she says thoughtfully. She turns back to the bag and strikes it. “Go ahead.”

“Who taught you all of this?”

She stops, and he watches her visibly consider not answering, then give herself a mental shrug.

“Guy named Stick. Found me after I was blinded, taught me martial arts.”

Steve wants to ask _how_ and _why_ , but they both seem rude. So instead he pulls out his wraps.

They train in comfortable silence, Mattie on the floor doing her katas, and Steve on the bag. When Steve hears the bag creaking dangerously, he decides to take a break, and Mattie joins him.

“So, what’s it like?” she says, drinking from her water bottle.

“What?”

“2012.”

“Strange. Everything moves a lot faster. And everything’s…brighter. The food’s better, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, we used to just boil everything.”

She laughs. “Sounds like where I grew up.”

“Maybe some things don’t change. I’m trying to catch up, though. They’ve got somebody teaching me the history stuff, you know, everything that I missed.”

“Seventy years - it’s a lot to cover.”

“You’re telling me.”

She nudges him with her shoulder. “At least tell me they’ve given you a pop culture primer.”

“A what?”

“A - oh, Jesus - reading list? Movie watch list? Music playlist?”

“Uh, no.”

“Oh, buddy, you’ve definitely got a long way to go.”

They keep training for a little while, then she has to leave, saying “Early class tomorrow.”

Three days later, she’s back, coming in while he’s working on the speed bag.

“Steve?”

“Yeah. Hi.”

“Hey. I brought you something.” She pulls out a blue notebook with Columbia University’s crest on the front, and a small plastic rectangle about half the size of Steve’s thumb. She holds them out to him. “After last time, I thought that _somebody_ had to give you a list of pop culture stuff to look up, so I had my roommate come up with a list of movies and TV shows, and I threw in some other stuff too, and then I made you a playlist…Here.” 

He takes the notebook and the…plastic thumb…and opens the notebook. There’s a handwritten list with things like “ _Star Wars_ ” and “ _The Godfather_ ” and “ _Harry Potter_ ” on it. Right at the top, there’s an item that says “Thurgood Marshall - Liberty Medal Speech (Mattie insisted).”

“I mean, it’s just what we could come up with, it’s not comprehensive at all…” she’s saying.

“This is great,” Steve says. “I…thank you.”

“And I divided up the music by decade, so you can play each one separately.”

“The - music?” He flips through the notebook, but most of the pages are empty.

“Oh, the USB has the music files.”

“USB? Oh, you mean, this?” He holds up the plastic thing. “Uh, sorry, the little plastic thing?”

“Yeah, it’s a USB key?” She holds out her hand, and he puts it in her palm. She flicks a slider on the side, and a metal tongue pops out from the end. “You have a computer, right?”

“Uh…technically.” There’s one in his apartment, but he finds it a little intimidating. Make that _very_ intimidating.

“Have you figured out how to turn it on yet?” she teases.

“I can turn it on. I just…don’t know what to do with it.”

She grins. “OK, this,” she holds up the USB, “plugs into your computer. It has digital music files on it. I usually don’t approve of digital audio, but it’s the easiest way to share music.” She might as well be speaking Chinese. “Do you have someone to show you how to access the files?”

“I…yeah, I can ask the…yeah, I do.”

“Cool.” She offers him the USB back, and he takes it. “Tell me what you like, I can get you more.”

“I don’t want you to waste your money.”

“Oh, my roommate just downloads it.” She pauses, then laughs. “Guess I probably shouldn’t tell Captain America that I’m giving him illegally downloaded music?”

“I’ll let it go this time,” Steve says sternly, “mostly because I have no idea what you just said.” She smiles, bright as sunshine, and his heart feels like it’s swelling in his chest.

She warms up, and he can’t take his eyes off her.

“So, do you spar?” he asks when she’s through her warmup.

She does, and it turns out, she’s _good_. Steve is stronger (not to mention bigger) and probably faster, but she uses a mix of more fighting styles than he knew existed, and she’s nimble and unpredictable. Steve feels like a lumbering ox against her, even if he’s able to knock her down when his strike connects.

He doesn’t ask how she does it.

That night, he dreams.

In his dream, he’s dancing with Peggy Carter in her red dress. 

“One last dance before midnight,” she whispers, and it’s important, but he can’t remember why.

Then Bucky is there, and there’s snow all around them as Peggy reaches her hand out to him. And Steve wants to warn her not to, but Bucky takes her, and they’re dancing in the snow.

“It’s OK,” Mattie says beside him. Her hair is soft and curly, the way Peggy always wore it. “You just have to change the song.” But there’s no music, and Peggy and Bucky have disappeared, and he’s standing in the ring with Mattie, holding out his hand to her. She takes it, her eyes sparkling, as he spins her. And he holds her close, until he can feel her body under him, and he can’t remember how they got to the floor, but he’s pressing her down as he puts his mouth against hers.

And then he wakes up.

After a cold shower, he sits up, looking at the list in the notebook. Mattie and her roommate filled two pages for him. He’s not even sure how he can watch any of the movies - do you watch them on the internet? And then there’s television, which people seem to treat like long movies, except when they don’t.

And it’s good to focus on how confusing twenty-first century technology is, because then he doesn’t have to think about how confusing twenty-first century women are.

He brings the USB to his history lesson, and asks Agent Park how to access the files. She picks it up between her thumb and forefinger as if it’s about to go off.

“Where’d you get this?”

“A friend. Gave it to me.”

She looks skeptical. “Do you trust this friend not to give you infected files?”

“Yes?” How would they be infected? Can you get a disease from a computer these days? (He wouldn’t put it past Howard Stark’s son, from what he’s read.)

Agent Park plugs in the USB to her laptop, and Steve watches over her shoulder as she clicks and double-clicks until he’s looking at a list of what he assumes are song titles.

“Whoever your friend is, they’ve got good taste in music,” muses Agent Park. She clicks and another list appears. “Where do you want to start?”

“She said she’d organized it by decade?”

“Yeah, she’s labelled each playlist. Earliest is the 50s.”

“Let’s start there.”

Agent Park double-clicks, and a singer announces, “One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock…”

“Oh, it’s the song from _American Graffiti_!” says Agent Park.

“What?”

“It’s a movie.”

“Right. Speaking of which…” Steve pulls out the Columbia notebook. “She gave me a list of movies and TV shows…”

Agent Park looks at the list. “Some friend you’ve got there, Rogers.” She sounds impressed.

“Yeah. She’s…nice. How do I…watch them?”

Agent Park pulls out her phone and holds it over the notebook, and Steve hears a click. She flips the page and the phone clicks again.

“I’ll have copies sent to your computer.” She pauses. “And I’ll show you how to open them.”

“Thanks.”

Agent Park looks at the Columbia crest on the cover of the notebook.

“Picking up co-eds, Rogers?”

“Hm?”

“Your friend. She’s a Columbia student? Or does she teach there?”

“Oh, student, I think. She mentioned going to class.”

Agent Park walks him through how to access the music files again, while a new voice sings, “That’ll be the day when I die.”

Mattie is at Fogwell’s when he comes in two days later. She waves in acknowledgement of his greeting, before continuing her punishment of the heavy bag.

“Rough day?” he says.

“Sexist dickbag at my clinical placement. Said I was too cute to be a lawyer.” She gives the heavy bag a savage series of kicks.

Steve knows enough about the twenty-first century to know that this is _not_ something one should ever say. 

Especially to a woman with Mattie’s skills.

Even if she _is_ cute.

“Want me to go find him?” he says.

“What, you gonna beat him up for me?”

“No, I’ve just been told I give very good lectures. I’ll let you handle the beating.” She stops and laughs, and seems to relax a little. “I, uh, started listening to the music you gave me.”

“Yeah? Anything you like?”

“Yeah! Uh, I’ve really just been listening to the 50s list so far…”

“Taking it slow?”

“Kind of. I liked the - Johnny Cash?”

“Yeah, you did!” she says, smiling broadly. “I _knew_ you’d be a Johnny Cash guy! There’s more of his stuff on the 60s list. And I think I put some of his later stuff in the 2000s.”

“I liked Buddy Holly, too.”

“Ah. Hate to break it to you, but that’s pretty much it for him.”

“What happened to him?”

“Plane crash. Uh, you’re gonna find that this is a recurring theme through the twentieth century. Musicians dying young, I mean.”

“Sounds kind of depressing.”

“Yeah, that’s the twentieth century for you. But at least it’s got a great soundtrack.”

Over the next few weeks, they fall into a pattern. Steve listens to her playlist by decade, and tells her which artists he likes. The next time she comes in, she’ll have a USB with a new playlist for each artist. Steve learns how to transfer files so she doesn’t use up too many USBs. Mattie introduces him to the iPod when she brings in her roommate’s and plugs it into Fogwell’s sound system (she needs Steve to actually operate the iPod). As they spar, Steve learns about Motown, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. He also learns some new fighting moves from her, expanding his skillset. When they take a break, he tells her about the movies he watches from her list.

He wonders if he should ask her on a date.

He wonders if people still date these days.

And when he slams her into the mat while “Stop! In the Name of Love” is playing, she smiles broadly, and doesn’t break his hold on her. Her hand is on his arm, but she’s not even gripping it, just a light pressure against his skin. She shifts her legs, and one of her thighs rubs against his, and he wants nothing more than to lower himself onto her right now.

He lets her go and backs away.

She looks…disappointed.

He dreams about her again that night, and in his dream, when he releases her, she moves his hand down her body in invitation. When he wakes up, he thinks for a moment that she’ll be there beside him.

But she’s not.

A few days later, she tells him that she won’t be around for the next few weeks.

“Just - finals are coming up week after next, and I _really_ need to study,” she’s saying.

“Oh, right. Yeah, that’s important.”

“But, I was thinking, when we’re done, you should come out and celebrate with us.”

“Us?”

“My roommate. He’s probably going to murder me if I don’t introduce you.”

“Well, wouldn’t want _that_ on my conscience.”

“Thanks. So -“ she pulls out her phone. “I should get your number. You have a phone, right?”

“Yeah, I have a phone.” Fury gave him one within a week of waking up. Steve even figured out texting…recently.

She talks to her phone, telling it to record a new contact, and Steve dictates his number into it. She tells the phone to call Steve, and his phone rings in his hand.

“So now you have my number, too.”

“How…?”

So she talks him through how to save her number, and there it is, under Contacts, right between Agent Park and SHIELD (General).

As she’s leaving, she leans over the bench where he’s sitting and kisses his cheek. He feels himself blushing as she pulls away, and he’s glad she can’t see it.

Without her, Steve goes back to brutalizing the heavy bags until the chains break. Fury finds him there one night after he’s already broken the first bag, and gives him the file on the Tesseract.

They should have left it in the ocean, but Howard Stark was never the guy to consider what _should_ be done.

After that, Steve is caught in a whirlwind of gods and monsters, blood and death, and rips in the sky. Then he’s sitting between Thor and Natasha, falling asleep over a shawarma, and his world will never be the same.

Tony gives him his old motorcycle, and says that Howard had saved it during the war.

Thor and Loki go back to Asgard.

Fury tells them that they can’t attend Coulson’s funeral in Wisconsin, but invites them to the SHIELD memorial service in Washington. Tony flies Steve, Bruce, Clint, and Natasha down for the service.

Steve speaks at Coulson’s memorial service. He can’t say no.

After the service, Fury, with Hill by his side, asks Steve to work for SHIELD. Steve looks out over Washington as Fury tells him about the threats the world faces, and thinks of Coulson. He agrees, but asks for two days in New York to wrap up his business there.

Before Tony flies them back that night, he goes to see Peggy Carter. She’s frail and bedridden, but her eyes light up when she sees him.

“Steve!” she says, and that’s his best girl, shining through.

Her memory is in pieces, but she remembers that he promised her a dance.

“I’ll just step on your toes,” he says, a lump in his throat.

“We’ll ask the band to play something slow,” she says, and there are tears in her eyes, too.

He’s shooed away by the nurse soon after that.

On the flight back to New York, he fiddles with his phone, scrolling over Mattie’s name in the contacts list. He looks around for the best candidate to ask his question, and wishes Natasha had come back to New York with them, because he’d rather ask her.

Not Bruce.

Definitely not Tony.

Which leaves Clint.

“Hey, Clint?” He taps Clint’s shoulder, and Clint jolts from his brooding.

“Yeah?”

“Uh, I gotta question. About, you know…” Steve gestures vaguely.

“What, sex?”

“No! I mean, uh, dating?”

“You…got a date?”

“Uh, maybe? There’s a girl. Anyway, do people still go dancing on a date?”

“Yeah. But don’t do that! You are _definitely_ not ready for clubs yet.”

“Oh.” That’s actually a bit of a relief. “What do people do on dates now?”

“Drinks? Dinner? I don’t know - who is this girl?”

“She’s - I met her at the gym.”

“Oh. Huh. Well, dinner’s a safe bet. Pick somewhere nice, share your dessert, and don’t let her pay, whatever she says.”

“That simple?”

“Trust me. Also, don’t take dating advice from Tony, whatever you do.”

“Yeah, I already figured that out.”

“Don’t take what from me?” says Tony, peering around the hologram hovering in front of him and Bruce.

“Nothing,” says Steve quickly. Then he has a thought. “Does anyone know a good place to eat near Columbia?”

They land in New York around ten in the evening, so Steve decides it’s too late to call Mattie. When he wakes up at six, he wonders when would not be considered too early to call. He calls her at nine, and gets her voicemail.

“Uh, this is Steve Rogers for Mattie?” _How are these supposed to go, again?_ “I, uh, I wanted to check that you were all right. After everything. And, uh, I wanted to tell you that I’m leaving New York. And I wanted to see you before I left. So, uh, please give me a call. Whenever’s convenient for you. OK. Over.”

He starts packing up what little he has in his apartment.

She calls him just after noon.

“Hey, Steve.”

“Hi!”

“Sorry, I was in an exam this morning - just got out. I, uh…so you’re leaving?”

“Yeah. I’m going down to Washington. They’re picking me up tomorrow night.”

“OK.”

“And I - I won’t be around to help you celebrate like I said I would, so I thought, uh, maybe I could take you out for dinner? Maybe tonight?”

There’s a pause, and Steve’s holding his breath.

“That sounds really nice,” she says.

When he pulls up outside her apartment building, she’s waiting outside. She’s wearing a blue dress under her leather jacket, and there’s a chubby guy with long blond hair with her, who Steve guesses is her roommate.

“Oh, my God, there he is!” The guy is gripping Mattie’s arm in excitement, and she’s laughing. Steve gets off his bike, leaving his helmet on the seat.

“Hi, Mattie.”

“Hey, Steve,” she says, perfectly cool. Her roommate squeezes her arm, and she elbows him back. “This is my roommate, Foggy.”

Foggy thrusts his hand out to Steve.

“It’s really - amazing - to meet you,” he stammers. Steve shakes his hand, and Foggy doesn’t seem to know what to do with it when Steve lets him go.

“Oh, I should thank you - Mattie says you helped her put together the list of movies for me.”

“It - it was - nothing, really. Just - hope you like them!”

“Yeah, I’ve been enjoying them.” Foggy gives a nervous laugh.

“OK, we should go,” says Mattie, offering her hand to Steve.

“Yeah, have -“ Mattie cuts Foggy off with a sharp turn of her head. “- fun. I’ll be at Marci’s. All night.”

“Bye, Foggy.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Steve, taking Mattie’s hand. He leads her back to the bike, and puts her hand on the seat. She runs her fingertips over it, feeling the shape.

“Didn’t know you had a bike,” she says.

“Tony Stark gave it to me after…everything.”

“Everything,” she repeats. “How _are_ you doing after…everything?”

Steve doesn’t really know the answer to that. “Ask me again later, I might have an answer by then.” He puts his helmet in her hand. “I’m glad you’re OK, though.”

“You too.” She puts on the helmet, and Steve helps her onto the seat, gathering her skirt between her knees. Steve tries not to stare at the pale skin of her thigh where her skirt rides up. She tucks her cane against her side, and Steve mounts the bike. When he revs the engine, she leans forward, and slides her arms around his waist.

Bruce had recommended a fondue restaurant (because of course it had to be fondue) a few blocks north of Columbia’s campus. The hostess’ eyes go wide when she sees Steve, and she almost trips as she leads them to their table. Mattie declines a menu.

“I, uh, I’m going to have to rely on you to tell me what they have,” she says.

“Oh, uh, that makes sense.” He reads her the different types of fondue.

“Do they just do fondue?”

“Uh, yes?”

“Um, it’s just - blind girl and hot liquids? Might not be the best combination.”

Steve’s heart sinks, and he can feel himself turning red. “Oh, I, uh, didn’t think of that. I’m really sorry -”

“Hey, it’s OK. It just means you’re going to have to do all the cooking.” She’s smiling in that way that reminds him of Bucky.

“I can do that. I think I can handle dipping your bread for you.”

She starts laughing. “Dude, that sounds like the worst euphemism ever.”

As he dips pieces of bread in hot cheese, he tells her about the other Avengers.

“…so Thor ate about four of them, _and_ he finished Natasha’s, and _then_ they gave us a plate full of…what’s the dessert they have?”

“Baklava?”

“Yeah, that, and I swear to God, he just _inhaled_ and they were gone.”

She laughs. “So, we need to start an interdimensional shawarma franchise?”

“I think we’d do really well in Asgard. As long as you serve alcohol - Thor was complaining about that.” He pauses. “He really likes coffee, though.”

She shakes her head as she scrapes cheese off her plate onto a piece of bread. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you met the literal Norse god of thunder. I mean, my Catholic brain is trying to work this out and -“

“I don’t think we should really be calling them _gods_. Trust me, I’ve seen what happens to an Asgardian after Bruce Banner gets angry at them. _He’s_ the one I’m more afraid of.” He spears a piece of bread on his fork. “I didn’t know you were Catholic.”

“With a last name like Murdock?”

“I didn’t know your last name.” He swirls the bread in the cheese.

“Guess you’re right.”

He slides the bread onto her plate.

“Me too,” he says.

“Hmm?”

“Irish Catholic. Not really practising these days, what with everything going on. My mother would be very disappointed, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, my grandmother too.”

Steve tries not to think that he’s probably the same age as her grandmother.

By the time the cheese is done, she’s got a little flush in her cheeks from the bottle of wine they shared, and she agrees readily to a chocolate fondue. When she eats a chocolate-covered strawberry, she makes a sound that makes him shift in his seat to try to ease the sudden tightness between his legs. She pauses in the middle of the strawberry, the corner of her mouth turning up, before she finishes it.

As he dips the fruit, he tells her about Tony’s disastrous attempt to expand his musical knowledge.

“I mean, it just sounded like noise to me. I didn’t even realize it was music when he played it in Germany.”

“Do you know what band it was?”

“I think he said it was AC/DC?”

“Back in Black?”

“I have no idea.” He shrugs, then realizes she can’t see it. “I, uh, shrugged. But I liked your music better.”

“That’s because you haven’t gotten to the 80s yet. I _did_ put some AC/DC on that list.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t have made me listen to the whole album.” She grins as she takes a bite of chocolate-covered banana. “I’m going to miss that. Your music, I mean.”

She looks like she’s going to say something, then she stops herself. Instead, she smiles and says, “And you haven’t even gotten past the 60s.”

“I’ll listen to the rest. I promise.”

She turns her face down, letting her hair fall around her face. “You’ve got the internet. I’m sure someone can help you find more.”

_It won’t be the same._

He pulls the blue notebook out of his back pocket, and pulls out the pencil from the spiral spine.

“What’s your favorite? Right now?”

“I…” She turns her face for a moment, as if she were glancing away. “There’s so many - I can’t think of anything. There’s this Icelandic band I just discovered…” She leans forward. “Do you want to come back with me and listen to some of my records?”

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

When he asks for the bill, the manager comes over.

“It’s on the house, Captain,” she says.

“No, I couldn’t possibly -“

“Please. After all you’ve done, it’s the least we can do.”

“At least let me pay for the wine?”

She shakes her head. “Have a good night, Captain. And thank you, for all of us.”

Steve leaves a hefty tip on the table as they leave.

Mattie’s apartment, he learns, is in one of Columbia Law’s residences. It’s a small two-bedroom, meticulously neat, everything sorted carefully into its place. Steve picks up a picture frame that shows Mattie and Foggy smiling in the sun. Next to it is a series of photos that can only be of Foggy’s family, but there are none of Mattie’s. For obvious reasons, he supposes.

“How long have you and Foggy known each other?”

“We met at the beginning of last year,” she says, handing him a bottle of beer. “We got assigned to the same unit here.”

“Guess you liked living together?” Steve settles on the couch with her as she drops her glasses on the coffee table, and she shakes her head, chuckling.

“The first few months, I couldn’t _stand_ him. He made a pass at me within about five minutes of meeting me, he was a complete mess, he left cheese dust on _everything_.”

Steve glances around. There’s no cheese dust in evidence. “So what changed?”

She pauses, taking a drink. “He wouldn’t let me spend Thanksgiving alone. I’ve - all through undergrad, I’d spent Thanksgiving on my own, and he refused to let me. He tried to get me to go to his family’s, but he said he’d stay here with me and make me dinner if I didn’t want to go.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I went to his family’s place. And…I had a real Thanksgiving for the first time since I was ten.” She leans back, brightening up. “And he got better about the messiness, and he’s pretty good about the junk food now. And there was some shit that went down with a professor that I helped him deal with -“ Steve laughs, because he’s not used to the way people swear these days, especially women. “And…we just kind of grew on each other. I love him, you know, he’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Steve wonders if at any point they were _more_ than friends, but he thinks it would be rude to ask. Mattie is getting off the couch, anyway, and leafing through the record collection on the shelf opposite. Each of the covers has a neat label in braille tacked to the side.

“So what do you want to listen to?” she’s saying.

“Something…recent?”

She runs her fingertips thoughtfully over the labels, then smiles.

“I think you’ll like this one,” she says, pulling out an album. She puts the record on the turntable and hands Steve the cover. On it is a black and white portrait of a beautiful woman, and the first song starts with a rich, deep voice singing passionately that there’s a fire starting in her heart.

Steve pulls out his notebook and writes “Adele” at the end of the list. By the midpoint of the song, he underlines it.

“If you can, definitely get a record player. It’s way better than that digital audio crap,” she says.

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

She launches into an explanation about how much better vinyl sounds than digital, and he only really understands every other word, and it’s a lot like listening to Tony and Bruce talk science.

“Oh, my God, I’m a hipster,” she says, cutting herself off, and she covers her face with her hand. Steve laughs.

“I think that means something different from what I remember,” he says.

“What?”

“We had hipsters in the 40s. Those hepcats and their hot jazz…” She giggles, nudging his leg with her foot. 

“I’ve got some Chet Baker over there, if you want jazz…”

“No, I like this.” He doesn’t say that he doesn’t know who Chet Baker is.

She leaves her feet in his lap, and he rests his hand on the bare skin of her ankle.

“We must’ve been quite a shock to you when you woke up,” she says.

“Some things, yeah. Women’s clothing, that was a surprise.”

“Bet it was.”

“First time I saw a woman in a miniskirt, I thought she was in her underwear.” She laughs into her beer. “And then there was you.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, you did take your shirt off in front of me.”

“I had my sports bra on!”

“It’s still underwear!”

“Are you saying you’re _complaining_ about the view?” She’s got a wicked grin on her face, and Steve wishes he could capture her expression in graphite.

“No! You looked - pretty - I mean, you are pretty - but I thought you were then - not that you’re not now…“ Her smile only gets wider as he trails off, his face turning red.

“Hey,” she says, pulling herself forward so that her legs are draped over his lap. Steve realizes too late that his hand has slipped up to her bent knee. He doesn’t move it away. She puts her hand on his shoulder, her fingers brushing his neck.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Hey, I’m not about to object to a cute guy calling me pretty.”

“How do you know I’m cute?”

“Well, I remember seeing comic books of you when I was a kid. But, if you’d let me,” she brushes her fingertips over his cheek, “would you mind if I…?”

“Oh, uh, no, go ahead.”

She brings up both hands to his face, and he closes his eyes as she trails her fingers over his skin. It’s strangely intimate, and he lets her take her time as he listens to Adele sing about setting fire to the rain. He feels her breath on his face as she brushes two fingers over his lips, and he opens his eyes to find her so very close. His hand is still on her bare knee, and he shifts it slightly to feel the soft skin on the back of her thigh. Her skirt has ridden up so that her thighs are bare, pale skin warm and inviting. He pulls his other hand up so that it’s at the small of her back. His eyes drift to her lips, parted and red and perfect, and then she leans in and presses them against his.

She pulls away too soon, but she just smiles and says, “Well, you’re officially gorgeous.” He tightens his arm around her waist, and pulls her against him, and then they’re kissing again, and he can’t get enough of her. Her hands frame his face, fingers combing through his hair, and his hand slides up her thigh, until he squeezes the muscle, and feels her gasp against his mouth.

After what seems like both an eternity and no time at all, she leans her forehead against his, and whispers his name.

“I…” she whispers, barely audible. “Steve, I - would you judge me if I asked you to stay?”

He shakes his head, letting her feel it against her forehead.

“I’d never judge you.” He grins. “‘Sides, I heard about the women’s rights movement, you’re not supposed to judge about that anymore.”

She chuckles a little, and kisses him. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, Captain Rogers.”

He’s smiling broadly as he hooks his arm under her knees and grasps her tightly against him, standing up suddenly as she gasps and grabs his shoulders. He pauses, not sure which bedroom is hers.

“Which door -?”

“The one on the right.”

He carries her into her room, and lays her on the bed. The sheets are smooth and silky against his skin as he climbs onto the bed, on top of her as she grips the front of his shirt, kissing her furiously.

Contrary to what Tony Stark may believe, Steve does have _some_ experience with sex. He might only be able to count his partners on one hand (and still have fingers left over), but he at least knows how this is supposed to go. Mattie unbuttons his shirt as he runs his hands over her, feeling the shape of her under her dress, and then he has to pull his shirt from off his shoulders, and she’s tugging his undershirt over his head. She moves her hands over his chest, tracing the lines of his muscles, and he can’t help but smile at her appreciative grin. She’s sitting up, so he reaches around to her back and finds the zipper of her dress. Once he’s slid it down to the small of her back, he pulls her dress over her head, and goes back to kissing, letting his hands feel her skin under him as his tongue explores her mouth.

He’ll say this for the twenty-first century: women’s clothing is a _lot_ easier to take off.

She reaches behind her and unclasps her brassiere in the middle of a kiss, and there are her breasts, not big the way Bucky used to like on girls, but they fit into his hands perfectly, and she sighs and moans when he puts his hands on them. He pushes her back onto the bed and kisses her throat as his hands work on her breasts, running his fingers over her nipples, squeezing her when she gasps, “Harder.” She’s got one hand grasping his hair, and she moans when his hand tightens on her flesh. She pulls him down into a kiss, and the hand in his hair runs down his neck and his spine, making him shiver.

There’s a shift of weight between them, and she’s rolling him onto his back, her legs draped on either side of him. She grinds her hips against his, and he groans into the mouth fastened onto his. He clasps his hands around her, his hands on her back, feeling the smooth skin and the ripple of muscle underneath.

Her mouth moves from his lips to his jaw, then his throat, then she’s kissing a trail down his chest, tongue flicking over a nipple before she continues her path down. Her hand squeezes at his crotch, making him gasp, and then she’s unbuckling his belt, and tugging his pants off. When they’re gone, she’s kneeling between his legs, and she runs her hand up his thigh, making the hair stand on end. He reaches out to her, brushing her cheek with his knuckles, and she turns her face into his touch, pressing a kiss against his skin.

She’s beautiful.

Her hand strokes him for a moment, then she lowers her lips to his cock, brushing a kiss against the tip before she swirls her tongue around the head. Then Steve is lost as she works her mouth on him, all tongue and lips and wet heat. He strokes her hair, and he’s not sure what comes out of his mouth, but he’s pretty certain he communicates how much he…appreciates her.

He comes in her mouth, and she slides away from him, smiling, and tells him she’ll be back. He hears water running in the kitchen as he lies there, barely able to put a thought together that’s more complicated than “these sheets are really nice.”

She comes back holding two glasses of water, and she offers him one. She’s a vision, standing there in just her panties, all pale skin and sleek muscles. She slides back into bed as he drinks his water, and she puts her empty glass on the bedside table when she finishes. He puts his on the floor next to the bed, and turns back to her, pulling her to him as he faces her.

“That was…” He searches for a word to express himself. “Incredible.”

She laughs, nestling her head against his shoulder. “Yeah, you were pretty clear about that.”

“I mean it - I…I’d never done that before.”

“Wait, seriously?” She lifts her head, but she can’t look at him, she just looks like she’s listening to something in the distance.

“Girls didn’t really do that in the forties.” He pauses, because from what he heard from the Howlies, that’s probably not true. “At least, not the girls I knew.”

“Wow. I gave Captain America his first blowjob.” She pauses, letting her head drop back to his shoulder. “That’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d say. Or hear. Outside of porn.” She turns, pressing her cheek against his chest. “Do I get a medal, or something?”

He laughs. “I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, it would be a bit awkward to have to explain that one to the President.” Her fingertips are tracing a pattern over his heart, and it’s driving him mad. He cups her cheek with his hand, and pulls her up for a kiss.

“Tell me what you want,” he whispers as he breaks the kiss.

She smiles gently, and takes his hand from her cheek. She grasps it, letting his fingers slide over her skin as she guides it down, down over her throat and her breast, down over her stomach, hooking them into the waistband of her underwear. He obligingly pulls them down her legs, and she kicks them off. She takes his hand again, and this time she starts him at her knee, moving his hand up the plane of her thigh, until she’s holding his fingers against her. She presses the pad of his finger against a little nub of flesh, and gasps as he slowly rubs his finger against it, feeling the slickness and the heat of her. She whispers “yes, right there,” as he strokes it again, and her back arches to press her breasts against his chest. He kisses her, feeling her moan against his lips as he moves his finger in a circle.

He pushes off from his side, pressing her back against the bed, and her legs fall open as he rolls on top of her. He keeps his hand between her legs, but he lets his other hand drift over her body, until her arms are around his shoulders, and she’s pressing his face to her breasts. He feels her body shake as she cries out.

He pulls his hand out from between them, and nuzzles at her neck, listening to her breathing. The movement brushes his erection against her thigh, and she makes a questioning noise in her nose.

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you…?” She slides her hand between them, and strokes him, making him groan a little. She looks surprised. “Uh, OK, that was…fast.”

“Hmm?” He’s not really interested in words when her hand is doing that.

“So…are you good to go again?” He opens his eyes, and she’s grinning that wicked grin again, the one that makes him want to kiss it right off her face. He makes a valiant attempt at it.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says against her lips, and she giggles.

“Do I have the Super Soldier Serum to thank for this?”

“Probably.”

“God bless America.”

She puts a hand on his chest and pushes him up while her other hand fumbles in the drawer of her bedside table. She pulls out a blue box, and he realizes that she’s getting a condom for him.

“Uh, did they have these in the forties?” she says, holding up the packet. He rolls his eyes.

“Yes, we had condoms.” He plucks it out of her hand and opens the packet. “I _was_ in the Army.”

“Just making sure,” she says, leaning back on her elbows as he rolls the condom on. He leans over her, bracing himself on his arms on either side of her, and she tilts her head back. He teases her, letting her feel his breath against her lips, then pulling back when she tries to lean in for a kiss. He lowers himself onto her, his chest pressing against hers, until she’s down on her back, her hands on his face. He wants to remember this moment, looking down on her, with her blank eyes and red lips and breathless smile.

Then he reaches between them and guides himself inside her, and this moment is even more perfect.

He moves slowly, gently, as she tightens her legs around him. Her hands are still on his face, holding him there, and he watches as her expression shifts minutely with each of his movements. She leans her head back, baring her throat to him, and he lowers his lips there, her fingers slipping into his hair as he presses his face against her neck.

He starts thrusting faster, and she gives a little moan with every one, until she’s gasping and climaxing under him and around him. He grips her thigh and pushes her knee up, and groans as the new angle lets him move deeper inside her, and then he’s coming, too, and his mind blanks for a moment.

He falls asleep with her pressed against his side, listening to the soft sound of her breathing.

In the morning, she offers him breakfast, so he eats toast sitting across from her, and wonders if he’ll ever see her again. As he leaves, she kisses him, and smiles sadly, and says, “You have my number. So whenever you’re in town, just - give me a call.” And he says he will, and he means it.

At his apartment, he finishes packing, and double checks that the blue Columbia notebook and the USBs she gave him are safely stowed. Fury had said that his computer would be brought down to Washington for him, so the files he’d transferred onto it will be there with him. Then the car arrives, and he’s on his way.

And as long as he lives in Washington, every time he hears Johnny Cash or Adele, he thinks of a pair of blind hazel eyes and a smile as bright as sunshine.


	2. After Pierce

They have a lead on Bucky: a sighting in Brooklyn. It makes a certain amount of sense; Steve is convinced that Bucky remembered _something_ up there on the helicarrier, so if Bucky’s trying to piece together his history, Brooklyn would be the first stop.

Except the trail is cold. The sighting turns out to be real, but there’s nothing to follow up, no way to know which way Bucky has gone. Sam suggests that he might still be in the city, but without any new leads, they’re stuck. They circle Steve’s old neighborhood half a dozen times, but it’s changed so much that Steve doubts Bucky could find anything to jog his memory there.

Tony somehow (Maria or Natasha, Steve guesses) gets wind that Steve is in New York, and invites him and Sam to stay at Stark Tower, newly reopened as Avengers Tower. On the tour that Tony gives them when they arrive, Tony shows off the state-of-the-art training facility, the luxurious living quarters, the somewhat terrifyingly articulate AI. Then Tony pours them all a drink, and tells Steve about his vision to bring the Avengers back together, to fill the void that the fall of SHIELD has left.

It’s a tempting dream, to stand side by side with his friends and protect the world.

He tells Tony he’ll think about it.

He stands in the bedroom of the suite he’s staying in (decorated in red, white, and blue, because Tony Stark has never been a subtle man), and looks out over the Manhattan skyline. He’s on the west side of the building, and he can see the glow of Times Square. _Just past that, a little to the left. Hell’s Kitchen_.

“JARVIS?” he says, a little awkwardly.

“Yes, Captain Rogers?” comes the precise British voice.

“Do you…play music?”

“Yes, Captain. What would you like to listen to?”

“Do you have any Johnny Cash?”

“I believe I have his complete discography. Do you have a preference as to which album you would like to listen to?”

“Any of the American series is fine, thanks.”

The music starts up. It’s “The Man Comes Around.”

He wonders if she still goes to Fogwell’s. It’s been two years, she’ll be out of law school now, so maybe she’s moved away. And she’s probably seeing someone; he can’t imagine she’s ever wanted for interested men. But she’d asked him to call her when he was in town.

He pulls the blue Columbia notebook from his back pocket, where it lives now. It’s battered and bent and there are water stains on the cover. He opens it and scans the list - most recent is the _Troubleman_ soundtrack (checked off, thanks to Sam). He flips to the first page, and looks at the very first entry: “Thurgood Marshall - Liberty Medal Speech (Mattie insisted)”.

_Democracy just cannot flourish amid fear. Liberty cannot bloom amid hate. Justice cannot take root amid rage._

He thinks of HYDRA, using Bucky to foment fear and hate and rage for seventy years. Bucky, who right now doesn’t want to be found. And Steve knows the chance that Tony is offering him, to help stop the people who did that to Bucky.

To fight the fear and the hate and the rage.

He wonders what she’s listening to these days.

He puts the notebook back in his pocket, and pulls out his phone. It’s still the same one Fury gave him when he was unfrozen, and her name is still in his contacts list.

He presses the call button before he loses his nerve.

“Hello?” comes her voice as she picks up.

“Hi, uh, Mattie. It’s Steve - Steve Rogers.”

“Uh, yeah,” she says quietly. “I know.”

“I’m, uh, I’m in town for a few days, and, uh, I was -“ He rests his forehead against the cold glass of the window. “I was wondering if you might want to have dinner with me?”

“I…yeah, that sounds great.”

Steve smiles, and feels his shoulders relax. “How does tomorrow sound?”

“Tomorrow sounds perfect,” she says.

She gives him the address of her work, and he tells her he’ll pick her up.

Then she says, “Is that Johnny Cash I hear?”

“Yeah. _American IV_.”

He hears her chuckle softly. “Good choice.”

_It makes me think of you_.

“I had it on good recommendation,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you then.”

In the morning, when he asks if Tony has a car he can borrow, Tony looks offended.

“Do I…? C’mon, Capsicle, let me show you.”

Tony takes him down to the basement parking levels, and when they step out of the elevator, Steve looks around at the most ridiculously expensive collection of cars he could ever imagine; he thinks if Natasha ever finds out about the sports cars, Tony will never see some of them again. 

“Or, if you want to stick to bikes, I’ve got these…” Tony is saying, and Steve sees a row of motorcycles, most of them sporty and candy-colored. But there’s a beautiful vintage one in hunter green, and Steve runs his hand over the handlebars in admiration. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Mind if I take this one?” Steve says.

“Knock yourself out. Just bring it back in one piece.” Tony points authoritatively at him. “No crashing into rivers.”

“Yeah, I think I can manage that.”

He takes the bike downtown to the skyscraper where Mattie works, and parks it on the street. The lobby inside is all glass and grey stone, a soaring atrium with no warmth at all. It doesn’t seem like Mattie’s kind of place, but maybe it doesn’t matter when she can’t see it. He asks the receptionist to tell Mattie that he’s here, and she stammers a little as she says “Steve Rogers is here for you” into the phone. He hovers awkwardly by the reception desk as he waits, and the receptionist blushes when he smiles sheepishly at her.

Then the elevator dings, and Mattie steps out. She’s on the arm of the guy Steve remembers as her roommate. Foggy, the one who helped her put together the first list in Steve’s notebook. His hair is shorter than Steve remembers, and he’s wearing a suit. And Mattie…

She looks older, more poised, not the law student he remembers. She’s wearing a crisp, grey dress that shows off her figure, and high heels, and her hair is pinned up at the back of her head, and she looks every inch the professional. Her glasses are different, too, round and red when the light hits them. They suit her.

“He’s over here,” says Foggy to her, and she smiles, and the smile is exactly how he remembers it.

“Hi, Mattie,” he says, as Foggy leads her over.

“Hey, Steve.”

He leans over to kiss her cheek.

“It’s good to see you again.”

“Wish I could say the same, but…” And she grins, and his stomach flips.

“Point taken,” Steve says genially. “Foggy, good to see you.” He offers his hand to Foggy, who takes it eagerly.

“You too! I mean, great to see you again.” He holds onto Steve’s hand after he’s finished shaking it, then seems to realize it, and lets go. “Right, I’ll let you get going.” He casually pats Mattie’s shoulder as he turns back to the elevator. “See you tomorrow.”

Mattie smiles at Steve, and he thinks that for all the polish of her new clothes, she looks tired.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.” He brushes her arm with his hand, and she expertly takes his elbow, and he leads her toward the front doors.

“I…I heard about what happened in Washington,” she says. “How are you doing?”

“Fine. It…it was rough for a little while, but we’re through that now.”

“Good.” He guides her through the revolving door. “So what brings you to New York?”

“It’s…a long story,” he says.

“We’ve got time.”

“Tell you over dinner?”

“Sure.”

They’ve made it to the bike, so he puts her hand on the seat, just like before.

“Same bike?”

“No, that one’s still down in DC. I borrowed this one from Tony. I’m staying at Avengers Tower.” He’s still a little embarrassed whenever he says it. He gives her the spare helmet and helps her onto the back seat, and feels her arms around him.

He takes her to the Oyster Bar in Grand Central, and she tenses a little when they pass under the archways outside the restaurant.

“You OK?”

“Yeah, just…the way the sound works under here…” She gestures up to the ceiling. “Just a little disorienting.”

Steve can hear the way the sound travels strangely, how someone standing over by the pillar can sound closer than the girl next to him. He supposes for someone who relies on sound to navigate, it must be the equivalent of a house of mirrors.

He reaches over and covers her hand on his elbow.

“I got you,” he says.

Over dinner, he asks her about the past two years of her life. She graduated _summa cum laude_ , and now she’s an intern at Landman & Zack. Foggy went with her. She lives in Hell’s Kitchen (not with Foggy). She tells him how Hell’s Kitchen’s respectability collapsed after the Battle of New York, how it slid into crime and decay in the aftermath.

“I’m sorry,” is all he can think to say.

“It’s not _your_ fault,” she says. “Hell, if it wasn’t for you, there wouldn’t _be_ a Hell’s Kitchen at all.”

It may not be his fault, but he can’t help but feel responsible.

When he asks her how she likes working at Landman & Zack, she sighs and says, “It’s corporate law, you know? It’s not what I thought I’d be doing with my life.”

“Didn’t you want to be a defense attorney?”

“Yeah,” she says, with an ironic smile. “Didn’t really go as planned.”

“Mind if I ask why not?”

She shrugs, and he thinks that she looks…miserable. “Money? An actual career path?” It’s hollow, and she knows it. “Foggy…” She shakes her head. “It’s complicated.”

Steve doesn’t think it is, but it’s her life, not his, and he doesn’t know the details. So he refills her wine glass instead.

He orders dessert, remembering Clint’s advice to always share, and that she’d said she loves chocolate.

“So, what should I be listening to these days?” he says as she takes a bite of the chocolate cake.

“Mm, have you heard of Murder by Death?”

“No.” He pulls the notebook out of his back pocket and writes it down.

“I think you’d like them - they’re an indie band, really good, and the singer sounds like Johnny Cash and Nick Cave had a love child.”

“Nick Cave?” He writes that name down too.

“Are you…” She cocks her head. “Writing that down?”

“Uh, yeah. I’ve…still got the notebook you gave me. Whenever somebody tells me I should listen to something, or watch something, I put it on the list.”

Her face has a strange expression on it, caught between a smile and surprise. She reaches out her hand, and he puts the notebook in it. She runs her fingertips over the cover, feeling the wear and tear on it.

“Glad it’s coming in handy,” she says softly, passing it back to him.

As they leave the restaurant, he asks her to come up to the Tower with him.

“Tony’s got a full bar set up, so there’s probably something you’ll like…”

It turns out, she likes whiskey, and she takes it neat. Steve takes a glass, too, because Tony’s whiskey tastes a little like heaven, even if he can’t get drunk off it.

Sam knows that Steve has a date, so he’d said he’d take advantage of the gym upstairs. Tony had locked himself in the lab all day, which means that he’s probably not coming out any time soon. And Bruce is at a conference, so they should have the common room to themselves all evening. 

“Oh, uh, what was that band you mentioned?” he asks, as he clinks his glass against hers, standing at the bar.

“Murder by Death?”

“Yeah. JARVIS?”

“Yes, Captain Rogers?” says JARVIS. Mattie ducks and says “Jesus!”, her free hand coming up defensively, her body suddenly full of tension.

“Oh, sorry! I should have mentioned - this is Tony’s AI, he runs the building.”

“Among other duties,” says JARVIS primly.

“Uh, JARVIS, this is Mattie Murdock. She’s a friend of mine.”

“A pleasure, Miss Murdock.”

“Uh, mine as well?” she says, her face turned up to the ceiling.

“I’m really sorry, I should have warned you -“ Steve stammers.

She’s laughing now, coming down from the adrenaline spike. “Yeah, you might want to warn the blind girl if a disembodied voice is going to start talking.”

“I do apologize, Miss Murdock,” says JARVIS.

“Uh, thank you?”

“Uh, JARVIS, Miss Murdock was wondering if you have any music by Murder by Death?” says Steve.

“I was?”

“Yeah.”

“I have their six studio albums available,” interrupts JARVIS. “Do you know what you would like to listen to?”

“Oh, uh, do you have _Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon_?” Mattie says.

“I do indeed, Miss Murdock.”

“That one. Please.” The music starts, a light guitar sound coupled with a rich, smoky voice that, yes, sounds a lot like Johnny Cash. Steve leads Mattie up the steps to the couches. “So,” she says as she settles down on one. “You never told me what you’re doing in New York.”

Steve hesitates, two years of SHIELD experience telling him that he shouldn’t share this sort of information with a civilian. But SHIELD is gone, and there’s no one left to classify the information.

“You heard about what happened in DC?” She nods. “You know the fugitive they’re after?”

“The one who killed that SHIELD guy?”

“Fury. Yeah. The assassin, he’s - he’s not…” He breaks off. _Start at the beginning, Rogers_. “It’s Bucky Barnes.”

There’s a pause, as she takes that in.

“Steve…I thought Bucky Barnes died in World War Two.”

“So did I. But HYDRA got him instead. They’ve been using him, they brainwashed him, turned him into a weapon…He didn’t know me,” he finishes sadly. “He didn’t remember me. But he saved my life, pulled me out of the Potomac. So I have to find him.”

“And you think he’s here?”

He nods. “We got word that someone spotted him in Brooklyn. That’s where we grew up -“

“I know.”

“And I think he’s trying to piece it together. He’s forgotten who he was, but there’s enough information out there -“

“That he can find out some of the facts.”

“Yeah.”

She takes his hand.

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s…they’d been freezing him, cryogenically, so he looks the same, but he doesn’t remember anything, he’s just -“

“No,” she says gently. “Tell me about him from before.”

So he tells her about growing up poor in Brooklyn, with sickness everywhere, around him and inside him, and only Bucky able to look out for him. He tells her about back alley fights against bullies that Bucky would pull him out of, about how girls always loved Bucky, and never gave him the time of day. 

“Except for Cynthia,” he says. “She was swell.”

“Yeah?”

“She was my first. My only, before the serum.”

“Sounds nice,” she says, leaning her head against her hand on the back of the couch. At some point, she’s put her glasses on the table and taken her hair down, and it’s framing her face in messy locks that he wants to run his fingers through.

“She was.”

“So how did Bucky react to you getting the serum?”

He tells her about finding Bucky and the rest of the Howlies in the POW prison, about his missions with them. About the rivalry between Falsworth and Dernier (the Rosbif and the Frog, they called each other), about Dum-Dum’s fear of his wife, about Jim Morita’s judo lessons, about the stupid jokes only they had understood.

About how Bucky stood next to him, and always had his back.

She laughs when he tells a funny story, and is appropriately outraged when he talks about the racism Jim and Gabe had dealt with. And when he talks about Bucky, she squeezes his hand and lets him ramble.

The music is over, so the common room is silent when he trails off.

“You loved him,” she says quietly.

“He was…family.”

She nods, and he remembers the way she talked about Foggy.

“And now he’s back,” she says.

“And I have to find him.”

“I…I’d offer to help, but I’m not sure what a blind lawyer can do.”

“If you hear anything, about someone seeing him, or a man with a metal arm -“

“I’ll give you a call.”

“Thanks.” He turns his hand in hers, so that he can run his thumb over the back of her hand.

She lifts her head off her other hand and strokes his cheek, and he looks at her, with her fair skin and dark hair, and he wants to draw her, capture her like this, all lovely and soft and kind.

He doesn’t ask to draw her. Instead, he asks to kiss her, and she says yes.

He leads her by the hand into the elevator, and presses her against the wall as it carries them to his floor. Down the hall, stopping a few times to kiss, until he has her up against his suite’s door frame, and she pulls herself up by his shoulders, wrapping her legs around his waist. He wraps one arm around her waist to hold her in place as he opens the door with the other, and carries her through the suite to his bedroom. They collapse _very_ gracefully onto the bed, making her laugh, and that makes him laugh, and he discovers that he likes kissing while laughing. She reaches around him to pull her shoes off, and he realizes he should do the same, so he sits up on the edge of the bed to untie them. She runs her hand down his spine and kisses his shoulder. When he has his shoes off, he sits up, and there’s a moment of stillness with her hand on his back. She slowly turns, and he reaches up to the zipper that runs down the back of her dress, and it opens slowly like a flower unfurling its petals, revealing the pale flesh beneath.

He kisses her neck as he pushes the dress off her shoulders and tugs it down. She slides it down her legs onto the floor, and turns her head as he pulls her back against him, feeling her warm skin under his hands, and her cheek against his.

She turns in his arms, and slowly unbuttons his shirt as he kisses her. When she has his shirt and undershirt off, he pushes her onto her back, and she unbuckles his belt, sliding her hand into his pants to stroke him.

And the moment she pushes his pants off is the moment he realizes that he doesn’t have any condoms.

“What? What’s wrong?” How did she know?

“I…I just realized I don’t have any protection.”

“Oh. I have some in my purse.”

“You do?” _Thank you, twenty-first century_.

“Yeah, I…sort of thought this might happen?”

“Fair enough. Apparently.” He pushes himself off the bed. “Uh, I’ll go get it. Where’d you put it?”

“On the coffee table where we were sitting.”

“OK. Be right back.” He kisses her, and takes a moment to admire her in her lacy black bra and panties.

Steve doesn’t bother to pull on his clothes, and so he’s in just his boxers when he heads back down to the common room.

Her purse is sitting on the table where she said it would be, and he also grabs her folded-up cane and her glasses, which she’d left behind in their rush to get to Steve’s suite. He’s just standing up when he hears a “Whoa” from behind him.

Bruce Banner is standing in the middle of the common room.

“Hey, Steve,” Bruce says warily.

“Bruce,” says Steve with an edge of panic. “I thought you were at a conference.”

“I was. Tony sent a jet to fly me back, said he needed me in the lab.” Bruce’s eyes rake him up and down. “Are you…do you have a girl here?”

“What?”

“You’re in your underwear, holding a woman’s purse.”

All of this is true. Steve resists the urge to use Mattie’s purse to shield his crotch.

And because this moment can’t get enough of Steve Rogers, Tony walks off the elevator.

“Uh, are we clothing-optional now? Because I thought _I’d_ be the one to start that.”

“No,” says Steve coldly.

“Steve has a girl here,” Bruce stage-whispers.

“Really?” Steve doesn’t like the way Tony’s eyes light up. “Capsicle, this is an important moment, when a boy becomes a man…”

“Shut it, Tony,” snaps Steve in his best Captain America voice, and he strides with as much dignity as possible to the elevator.

“Do we get to meet her?” says Tony.

“No.”

“Is she staying for breakfast?”

“I’m not telling you.”

As the elevator doors close, he hears Tony call, “Go get ‘em, tiger!”

When he gets back to Mattie, she’s curled up on the bed, her face pressed into the mattress, and she’s shaking. He thinks she’s crying, at first, but then he realizes that she’s laughing.

“What…?”

“Oh, sorry,” she says, sitting up, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth to try and stop her laughter. “I just…you got caught, didn’t you?”

He’s not going to ask how she guessed. “Yeah. Tony and Bruce were in the common room.” That sets off another round of laughter from her. “It’s not that funny.”

“It’s pretty funny.”

He flops down onto the bed next to her, dropping everything onto the floor. “I’m never going to hear the end of this. Natasha’s going to be a nightmare.”

She reaches out, brushing against his arm, then pulls herself up and over him so that her arms are on either side of his shoulders, and her face is just above his. She grins. “Make it worth your while,” she says, and she puts her hand on his face, and kisses him. He holds her for a moment, then breaks the kiss and puts her purse in her hand. “Oh, right.”

“I also grabbed your cane and your glasses.” He picks them up off the floor, and she sits up on her knees to take all three. She puts the cane and the glasses on the bedside table, then opens her purse, fishes through the contents, and pulls out a short strip of condoms. She tears one off, and gives it to him.

He’s not hard, thanks to Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, so he pulls her down to him, running his fingers through her hair. She moves her hand over his chest, her fingertips maddeningly light on his skin, her nails just catching at his nipple, making him shiver. He feels her smile against his mouth, and then her hand is moving down, tracing the shape of his abs. Steve’s never been particularly ticklish, but she seems to find just the right pressure, and he twitches and laughs.

“You have _amazing_ abs,” she says, a teasing edge to her voice.

“Yours aren’t so bad either.”

She smiles smugly, and her hand continues down into his boxers, and she’s stroking him.

“Well,” she says, “I have to work at them. _You_ , on the other hand…”

“I work out,” he tries to protest, but her hand tightens around him, and he cries out.

He’s definitely hard now, so he gently pulls her hand out of his boxers, and reaches around her to unclasp her bra. She teasingly pulls out of his grip, and coyly slides one strap off, then the other, holding the bra to her breasts with one hand, before tossing it over her shoulder with a grin. Steve smiles broadly, and grabs her around her waist, pulling her towards him in a kiss, before wrestling her to the bed with his arms around her. She yelps and laughs, squirming under him, and he flips her onto her stomach, sliding his knee between her thighs, and leaning over her to press his face into her neck. She’s stopped laughing now, her breath is ragged, and he runs one hand along her side, until his hand is squeezing the curve of her ass.

He grinds against her ass slowly, and she lets out an “Oh, God, Steve” that’s half ecstatic and half pleading. Her head is tilted to one side, exposing the side of her neck, so he sucks at the skin under her ear and lets her feel his breath on her skin. Then he pulls back, looking down at her, the smooth lines of her back, her face turned to the side with her cheek pressed against the pillow. She moves to sit up, but he puts a hand on her back to keep her there, and presses a line of kisses down her spine, until his lips are brushing her tailbone, and he has a hand on either hip, sliding her underwear down over her ass and legs. He quickly shucks his boxers and leans over her to kiss her lips before he rolls the condom on. When he’s ready, he puts a hand on either of her thighs, and she spreads her legs for him.

“This OK?” he whispers.

And he sees her smile against the pillow. “God, yes.”

So he crawls up her body until he’s crouched over her, lines himself up with her, and slowly enters her, listening to her long, soft moan. He sighs when he’s fully inside her, burying his face in her hair, enjoying how incredible she feels. After a moment, he starts moving, pulling out almost all the way, then back in, in long, slow strokes that make her groan and swear, and then she’s whispering “please” and he doesn’t know what she wants, but he wants to give it to her. He picks up speed, and “please” turns into “yes,” and she’s bracing herself with her arms against the mattress, pushing herself back against him as he thrusts into her. He slides a hand around her, guiding a finger between her legs and brushing against her clit, and that’s enough to make her shout, and her whole body shudders. Her arms seem to give out for a moment, and she collapses face first into the pillow, so he slows his pace, and brushes a kiss against her cheekbone. She smiles, and makes little mewling noises as he moves inside her, until he comes, shaking, with his body pressing down on hers.

She doesn’t move as he gets off her to throw away the condom, and only rolls over lazily when he climbs back into bed. He strokes her cheek.

“So, worth the embarrassment?” she murmurs.

“I don’t know…” he says. “I think we might have to try again, just to make sure…”

They don’t get much sleep.

In the morning, Steve makes her coffee in the kitchen. Sam wanders in, and they all take a cup while Steve looks for breakfast. They discover that Tony and Bruce really don’t keep much food around at all.

“Uh…I could run down and see if I can get a breakfast roll or something?” he says, staring into the fridge, which only contains half-eaten takeaway.

“It’s fine,” she says. “I pretty much just live on coffee anyway, these days.” She suddenly lifts her head, as if she heard something, and the elevator doors open.

“So, _this_ is the young lady who’s turning my tower into a den of iniquity?” says Tony, striding over with Bruce trailing behind him.

“Tony Stark, I presume?” she says, turning to him.

Tony freezes, taking in her blind eyes. Steve smirks over his coffee. _Talk your way out of this one, Iron Man_.

To his credit, Tony rallies. “That would be me. And you are…?”

“Mattie Murdock.” She offers him her hand, and he takes it.

“Pleasure.” He wanders over to the coffee machine, where Bruce is pouring himself a cup. Mattie slips on her glasses.

“Bruce Banner,” says Bruce, giving a wave, then awkwardly lowering his hand when he realizes she can’t see it.

“Uh, Bruce just waved,” says Sam, and Steve thinks he should have been the one to say that.

“Oh, hi,” she says, waving vaguely.

“So, what _are_ your intentions towards Captain Cold here, Jezebel?” says Tony, stirring sugar into his coffee.

“Absolutely dishonorable, Mr Stark,” she says evenly.

Tony nods approvingly. “Good. We’ve got a reputation to protect around here.” But he’s peering at her sharply, for all his light tone. “Where’d he find you, anyway?”

“At the gym,” says Steve. “When I lived here, before the battle.”

“So…you two have been…”

“No,” Mattie says, “we just - Steve just gave me a call when he was back in town.”

“You’re the girl from Columbia,” cuts in Bruce, pointing at her.

“I’m what?”

“Bruce recommended the fondue place, you remember? Where we went?” says Steve.

“Oh!” she says. “Uh, thanks, it was a really nice place.”

_It was a really nice night_.

“So if you went to Columbia,” says Sam, “does that mean you’re the one who gave him the notebook?”

“Uh, yeah,” she says.

“Nice,” he says, and he flashes Steve a grin.

Mattie drains her mug.

“Do you want more?” Steve asks. “Mattie?”

“Oh, uh, no, thanks, I should get going,” she says. “I need to show up to work at _some_ point today.”

“It’s Saturday,” says Bruce.

“And I’m just an intern,” she says, smiling grimly. “I don’t get weekends. The only reason I can get away with not going in earlier is that the entire building knows Steve Rogers picked me up last night.”

“What do you do?” says Sam.

“I’m a lawyer. At Landman & Zack.”

Tony gives a little “huh,” but doesn’t say anything else.

“Do you need a ride?” says Steve.

“Yeah, that would be nice.”

He takes her to her apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, and leads her to the door of her building.

“So…” he says.

“Yeah,” she says.

The moment stretches awkwardly.

“It was really good to see you again,” he blurts out.

“You too. I mean…you know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” He puts his hand on her shoulder and kisses her.

“We should do this again,” she says, as they pull apart. “Maybe not wait two years, next time?”

“Yeah, we should.”

“So…you still have my number.”

“I do.”

“Then you know what to do.”

She smiles and unlocks the door, and then she’s gone. He watches her climb the stairs through the glass.

When he gets back to the Tower, Bruce is already on his way back to the conference, and Tony is in the lab, so he finds Sam playing a video game in the AV room.

“Hey, Mattie get home OK?” says Sam, pausing the game.

“Yeah,” Steve says. Sam grins. “What?”

“Nothing. She’s cool, is all. For a lawyer.”

“Yeah, she is.”

“Natasha know about her?”

Steve flops down in the armchair next to Sam.

“I think it’s safe to say that Natasha knows everything,” says Steve.

That night, Steve sits up in his suite, and asks JARVIS to play the album Mattie had asked for the night before. He listens to the dark, cello-backed melodies, until he reaches the last, lilting song.

_She’s a hard one to trust_  
_And he’s a roving ghost._  
_Will you come back, will you come back,_  
_Or leave me alone?_

He’ll come back. He’ll come back for her.

They get another lead on Bucky, and he and Sam head out the next day. Then, through the summer, Maria starts sending him reports of HYDRA activity, and he starts taking detours to deal with them, usually pairing up with Tony or Natasha. By the end of the summer, he admits that the leads on Bucky have dried up, and he spends more time taking out HYDRA bases, so he officially moves into the Tower with Clint and Natasha, and their entire existence is focussed on the next mission, the next base, the next target.

He thinks of her, sometimes. But it’s never the right time, it’ll come at three in the morning, or when they’re on the quinjet over the Atlantic, or when he’s about to go do some PR thing that Maria set up.

He can always call her later. But now, there’s work to be done.


	3. After Von Strucker

“OK, have you guys seen the latest Daredevil video?”

Clint is trying to explain why he’s trying to perfect a very specific flip-kick. He is, apparently, inspired by the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

Steve shrugs; he hasn’t been paying attention to the vigilante stuff that’s been happening in New York, since it seems to be limited to organized crime and petty criminals.

“JARVIS?” says Clint.

“Yes, Mr Barton?”

“Could you pull up the most recent Daredevil video on Youtube?”

The video flickers to life in the middle of the gym, the hologram a few feet wide. The Avengers cluster on one side of it, and watch the shaky footage as a woman in a red suit and a horned mask takes out two men with guns. She finishes by flipping backwards, twisting in midair to land a kick on each of her opponents.

And the entire room around Steve disappears, because all he can see is Daredevil.

He hasn’t seen anyone fight like that in three years.

He’s only ever seen one person fight like that.

And she lives in Hell’s Kitchen.

The other Avengers are chattering, and Clint is having JARVIS pull up more videos, and there she is, captured on phones and CCTV cameras, fighting cops and thugs, or climbing buildings and launching herself into the air.

“…illegal or not, she’s still hot,” Tony is saying. “Objectively speaking, _that_ is a perfect ass.”

Steve tries not to think about how that ass felt under his hands.

“Tony, stop objectifying women,” Steve snaps.

“That is unfair, I objectify _everyone_ ,” Tony shoots back.

“We need more women on the team,” Steve mutters to Natasha.

“You’re telling me,” she mutters back.

“Hey, look, there’s one!” says Clint, waving at the video. “We could go find her!”

“How?” Because Steve is absolutely certain he doesn’t want the Avengers descending on her.

“Hell’s Kitchen isn’t that big. We fan out, each take a couple of blocks, we’ll find her in a few hours, tops.”

“You seriously think we should recruit the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen?”

“JARVIS, play this video,” says Clint smugly. Steve watches the black and white footage of Daredevil taking out four cops. “ _That’s_ someone I want on my team.”

“You don’t know anything about her,” says Steve.

“We know she doesn’t kill,” says Bruce. “And she took out an entire crime syndicate last fall.”

“And she kicks ass. And looks great in leather,” says Tony.

“We’re not recruiting Daredevil,” says Steve. At least, not until he’s talked to Mattie. Won’t that be fun?

He walks out of the gym.

“You know who she is, don’t you?” comes Natasha’s voice from behind him.

“Why would you think that?” he snaps.

Natasha just smiles that serene smile that says she knows all your secrets.

“You don’t have a great poker face, Steve. You recognized her when you saw that video. _And_ you didn’t make the one argument against recruiting her that might actually work.”

“Which is?”

“She’s a vigilante. Technically, a criminal. And we would be seen to condone that if we recruited her.”

“Are you saying we shouldn’t?”

“That’s not my call,” she says placidly. “And I’m in no position to judge someone’s record.” She tilts her head, considering him. “It’s the girl from Columbia, isn’t it? The lawyer.”

“How did you -?”

“You don’t know that many people in New York, Steve.” She pauses. “I thought she was blind.”

“Yeah, she is.”

“Enhanced?”

“Not that I know of.” Although, now that he thinks of it, it would explain a lot.

“Hm.”

“Nat, please don’t tell the others. Not until I’ve talked to her.”

She nods. “‘Course.”

Of course, Thor arrives a few hours later, and they’re off, hunting down Loki’s sceptre. It takes weeks of work, and then they have it, and they’re back in New York. While Helen Cho is patching up Clint, Tony decides to throw a party to say goodbye to Thor (not that Tony ever needs an excuse for a party), and tells everyone to invite anyone they want.

Steve calls Sam, who is close enough that he can make it. He calls the World War Two vets he’d met when he’d visited the VA hospital, and arranges to have them picked up by one of Tony’s staff.

Steve stares at his phone, and debates calling her.

She’s not the girl he knew. He’d known a law student, then a lawyer, who was just trying to figure out her place in the world. Now she’s a vigilante, famous for her ruthless violence. _And for not killing_.

He remembers sparring with her, the savage smile she’d have, even when he knocked her down. He can imagine how terrifying that smile would be under a red mask with devil horns.

And he remembers another smile, the one that could power a city block.

He presses the call button.

“Hey, Steve?” comes her voice.

“Hi, Mattie.”

“Uh, how are you doing? No, I’ll be there in a sec.” That last bit sounded like she’d turned away from the phone. “Sorry,” she says into the phone.

“It’s OK. I, uh, I was just calling because Tony’s having this party tomorrow night, and he told us to invite anyone we want, so I was wondering if you’d like to come? You can bring Foggy, if you want.” 

There’s a pause.

“Wow, uh, yeah, that sounds amazing, uh, thanks for thinking of us. Um, at the Tower?”

“Yeah. We’re starting around 8, I think.”

“How fancy are we talking?”

“Uh…?”

“Are you going to be wearing a suit?” she asks, and there’s that teasing edge he’d missed.

“No. But Tony is.” Tony had made an offhand comment about getting his suit back from the cleaners.

She chuckles on the other end of the line. “OK, that helps. Oh, hey, do you mind if Foggy brings a date?”

 _Thank God_.

“No, not at all, the more the merrier.”

He hears someone talking in the background.

“Look, Steve, I gotta go, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, looking forward to it.”

She wears red. The dress is high-necked and sleeveless, but he sees the edge of a bruise peeking out on her shoulder, and there are scars on her forearms that weren’t there before. But the smile…the smile hasn’t changed.

Foggy has a tall blonde woman with him, who Mattie introduces as Karen, their office manager. She laughs awkwardly when she shakes Steve’s hand, and stammers that it’s great to meet him.

“Jezebel!” shouts Tony. “Glad you could make it!” He kisses Mattie’s cheek. “So glad you’re here, he’s been wound tight these past few weeks,” he mutters to her.

“Do you blame him, having to hang around with you?” she shoots back as Steve goes red.

“I’ll have you know, I’ve been told my presence is very relaxing. Tony Stark,” he says, offering his hand to Karen.

“Oh, uh, I know,” says Karen, shaking it. Tony waits for a moment. “Oh! Karen, Karen Page.”

“Lovely to meet you. Grab a drink. Hi, Tony Stark.” He’s moved on to Foggy.

“Foggy Nelson.”

“Cute. I like it. Make yourselves at home.”

Steve finds himself playing pool with Sam and Foggy; Sam wins, and Foggy challenges him to a rematch at their local in Hell’s Kitchen. Karen turns out to be a hit with the vets, who flirt with her shamelessly. Steve apologizes to Sam for not calling him about the last Avengers mission, which somehow gets them to the subject of Steve’s search for a place in Brooklyn. Steve looks out over the party, and his eye is caught by Natasha and Mattie over by the bar; Natasha is mixing a cocktail for Mattie, who is leaning over the bar with the crooked grin Steve is used to seeing directed at him.

Steve whisks Mattie away from Natasha as quickly as possible.

“So, what happened with Bucky Barnes?” she asks.

“Uh, no luck. So far. But we’re still working on it,” Steve says.

“I’m sorry.”

“We’re getting closer. It’ll take time, but…”

“Gotta keep trying?” 

“Yeah.” He takes a drink of beer. “So, I should ask - who should I be listening to?”

She grins, and asks if he’s heard of this band or that, and he writes them down.

In bits and pieces, Steve learns that Mattie and Foggy left Landman & Zack soon after he’d seen her last, and started their own firm (Foggy brought business cards), and that they’d been involved in the case against Wilson Fisk.

“That’s the one that Daredevil was involved in, right?” says Rhodey. Steve feels Mattie stiffen beside him.

“In a very peripheral way. From a legal point of view,” says Foggy.

“Didn’t she beat the man into unconsciousness?”

“Technically, he was a fugitive at the time, so one could argue she was conducting a citizen’s arrest.”

“In a devil costume?”

“Citizens are free to wear whatever they want.”

“Hey,” says Mattie to Steve, “do you mind taking me over to see how Karen’s doing?”

Karen is mediating between Thor and some of the vets over some Asgardian liquor which Thor claims is “not for mortal men.” Thor pours some into Steve’s glass, and Steve sniffs it suspiciously.

“Neither was Omaha Beach, blondie. Stop trying to scare us,” says Stan, gruffly. Thor looks at Steve, who shrugs. What harm could it do?

Twenty minutes later, Steve is feeling the effects, tipsy for the first time in seventy-five years. He sees Karen getting some of Tony’s staff to help the vets out. Mattie is arguing with Tony over digital audio versus vinyl. Bruce and Natasha are by the bar, and Steve thinks that he’s never seen Natasha look so…unguarded.

And Bruce is so twitchy, Steve knows he’ll never do a damn thing. He’s been there, he knows exactly what it feels like, to want something so badly that’s right in front of you.

Steve leans against the bar, and watches Natasha walk away.

“It’s nice,” he says to Bruce.

“What - what is?” says Bruce.

“You and Romanoff.”

“We haven’t - that wasn’t -“

“It’s OK. Nobody’s breaking any by-laws. It’s just, she’s not the most…open person in the world. But with you, she seems very relaxed.”

“No, Natasha, she’s just - she likes to flirt.”

“I’ve seen her flirt, up close,” says Steve, grabbing a beer and thinking of a ride in a stolen car, “This ain’t that.” He moves past Bruce, and maybe the Asgardian alcohol is what makes him say it. “Look, as maybe the world’s leading authority on waiting too long: don’t. You both deserve a win.”

Steve walks away, takes a drink, and sighs. _Take your own damn advice, Rogers_.

Mattie isn’t with Tony any more. She’s not with Foggy and Karen, who is looking a little worse for wear, and Steve wonders if Thor gave her some of his Asgardian hooch.

He finds her out on the balcony, leaning on the railing.

“Mattie,” he says, coming up beside her.

“Hey, Steve,” she says. “Sorry, just needed some air. I’m not great with crowds.”

“Yeah, I can imagine that. Look, I wanted to talk to you.”

“‘Bout what?” She smiles, turning her face to him.

Steve sighs and leans on the railing.

“I know you’re Daredevil,” he says.

The change in her is instantaneous, from relaxed to ice-cold tension.

“And?” she says. She doesn’t bother to deny it. Steve shrugs.

“No ‘and.’ Thought you should know.”

“Who else knows?”

“Natasha. Probably Maria.”

“Great,” she grits out. “You’ve literally doubled the number of people who know about me.”

“Hey, hey,” he says, putting his hand on her arm. “We’re not going to do anything. What you’re doing, we’re on your side. Clint’s a huge fan.” She laughs mirthlessly. “Seriously, he spent half an hour showing us videos of you. That was how I figured it out.”

“From videos?”

“Never seen anyone fight like you.” She shrugs, and finishes her drink. “Ask you a question?”

“I wasn’t born blind,” she says, and the smirk is back, so Steve hasn’t chased her away yet.

“Not the question.”

“Go ahead,” she says quietly.

“Why do you do it?”

She hesitates. “Why do you?”

He thinks it over. “Because nobody else can. Or will.”

“Me too.”

Steve reaches out and brushes his hand down her arm. _Don’t wait too long_.

“You don’t have to do it alone,” he says.

“Unless you’re offering to suit up and come over to Hell’s Kitchen, yeah, I do.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

And she steps into his space, and even if he’d meant “join the Avengers,” it turns out what he’d really meant was “let me kiss you.” Or at least, that’s what she’d heard.

Yeah, it was probably what he meant.

When the kiss ends, she puts her hand on his face.

“What now?” she whispers.

 _Now, you join the Avengers, and we fight bad guys together_.

“Now, we get another drink,” he says.

As he leads her back inside by the hand, Foggy comes up to them, Karen draped around him.

“Hey, Mattie, I’m going to take Karen home - do you want to share the cab?” he says. Karen waves blearily.

“Uh, I was just…” Mattie gestures vaguely at Steve.

“I can make sure you get home OK, if you want to stay,” Steve says. _Stay all night. Please_.

“Yeah, that would be nice.”

“OK, we’ll get going then,” says Foggy. “Steve, thanks for the invite, this was awesome.”

Karen mumbles something that’s lost in Foggy’s shoulder that Steve assumes is “goodbye.” Or “thank you.”

The party clears out pretty quickly after that, leaving just the Avengers and a few others lounging on the couches. Helen Cho is dozing in an armchair, Rhodey and Maria are still there, and Clint is needling Thor about Mjolnir, which is sitting on the table. Mattie’s hand is in Steve’s as they drink their beer. 

“Please, be my guest,” says Thor, and the conversation stops. Thor has always been very…possessive of Mjolnir.

“Really?” says Clint.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, this is going to be beautiful,” says Rhodey.

“Clint, you’ve had a tough week, we won’t hold it against you if you can’t get it up,” says Tony helpfully.

“You know I’ve seen this before, right?” says Clint. Thor just nods. Clint grasps the handle and tries to lift the hammer, and he might as well be trying to lift the tower, from the looks of it. Steve glances over to Mattie, who has her head cocked, listening, an amused grin on her face. “I still don’t know how you do it!” says Clint, laughing, as he lets go.

“Smell the silent judgment?” says Tony.

“Please, Stark, by all means.”

There’s a chorus of “Mm-hmms” and “OKs”.

“Never one to shrink from an honest challenge,” says Tony, getting up and unbuttoning his jacket. 

“Get after it,” says Clint.

Tony loops the wristband over his hand. “It’s physics,” he says.

“Physics,” says Bruce skeptically.

“Right, so, if I lift it, I then rule Asgard?”

“Yes, of course,” says Thor.

“I will be reinstituting _prima nocta_ ,” says Tony.

“Is that the only way to get an Asgardian to sleep with you?” says Mattie. Maria and Natasha laugh.

But Tony is already trying to lift the hammer, which isn’t budging.

“I’ll be right back,” he says.

And now it’s more than a joke, it’s a competition. Tony and Rhodey both get their gauntlets out (no luck). Bruce gives it his all (well, not his _all_ ), and no movement. Then it’s Steve’s turn, and the hammer shifts almost imperceptibly when he grasps it. Steve glances up, and sees Thor’s face fall, and Mattie’s smile widen. But Mjolnir won’t move after that. He sits down next to Mattie.

“You want to give it a try?” he asks. Who knows, maybe the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is worthy.

“I don’t think I could beat Captain America,” she says as he slips his arm around her waist. Over on the other couch, he hears Bruce and Natasha having pretty much the same conversation.

“All deference to the Man Who Wouldn’t Be King, but it’s rigged,” says Tony.

“You bet your ass,” says Clint.

“Steve, he said a bad language word,” says Maria.

“Did you tell everyone about that?” says Steve.

“About what?” says Mattie.

“Steve doesn’t approve of bad language,” says Maria.

“Oh, fuck,” says Mattie, grinning impishly.

“The handle’s imprinted,” interrupts Tony, “like a security code? ‘Whosoever is carrying Thor’s fingerprints,’ is, I think, the literal translation.”

“Yes, it’s a very, very interesting theory,” says Thor. “I have a simpler one.” He picks up the hammer, flipping it in his hand. “You’re all not worthy.”

Beside him, Steve feels Mattie tense, and her head whips around. The others groan at Thor, but Mattie looks distressed.

“Mattie?” says Steve.

Then a high-pitched mechanical whine fills the room. It sounds awful, but Mattie claps her free hand to her ear like it’s hurting her. The sound fades quickly, and there’s a moment of confusion before a mechanical voice comes from the floor below.

“Worthy…No.” There’s a figure there, silhouetted against the wall lights, looking like a life-size broken doll. Its face is glowing the way Tony’s Iron Man mask does, but this thing isn’t acting like any of the Iron Legion. “How could you be worthy?” it asks. It stalks towards them in a broken gait. “You’re all killers.”

“Stark,” says Steve.

“JARVIS?” says Tony.

“I’m sorry,” says the thing. “I was asleep. Or I was a-dream.” Steve can hear Tony trying to communicate with JARVIS. “There was this terrible noise,” continues the thing, staggering around. “And I was tangled in, in…strings. I had to kill the other guy. He was a good guy.”

“You killed someone?” says Steve, trying to push Mattie behind him, but she’s not moving.

“Wouldn’t have been my first call. But, down in the real world, we’re faced with ugly choices.”

“Who sent you?” says Thor.

And Tony’s voice comes from the thing, saying “I see a suit of armor around the world.”

“Ultron,” says Bruce, looking at Tony. _What’s Ultron_?

“In the flesh,” says the thing, says Ultron. “Or, no, not yet. Not this chrysalis. But I’m ready. I’m on mission.” Maria turns her back on Ultron, standing up, and Steve sees the pistol in her hand.

“What mission?” says Natasha.

“Peace in our time,” says Ultron, and the wall behind him explodes, Iron Legionnaires rocketing into the room. One shoots straight towards Steve and Mattie, so he kicks the table up, making it ricochet away, but the Legionnaire’s momentum throws the table back at them, and they land in a heap together.

“You OK?” he says.

“I’m blaming you for this,” she says, and she flips to her feet. _So, this is Daredevil_.

They attack one of the Legionnaires together, Mattie charging it from the front while Steve leaps onto its back. It tries to shoot Mattie, but she flips through the air, the bullets never touching her. She lands a kick on it, breaking one of its arms, before it blasts her with a repulsor, smashing itself and Steve into the wall behind them. He falls to the ground, but the broken Legionnaire is already flying away, and Steve sees Helen Cho crouched by the piano.

A red blur passes him, and Mattie is running at Helen, flipping over the Legionnaire and kicking it towards Steve, who grabs it and throws it at Thor, who smashes it with Mjolnir.

Steve hears a “Cap!” and sees Clint throwing his shield to him, and catches it, swings it around, and throws it at the last Legionnaire, which smashes into pieces.

“That was dramatic,” says Ultron calmly. Steve looks around, and everyone is breathing hard, tensing for the next round. “I’m sorry, I know you mean well. You just didn’t think it through.” Mattie has come up by Steve’s side. “You want to protect the world, but you don’t want it to change. How is humanity saved if it’s not allowed to evolve?” It bends down, and picks up one of the broken Legionnaires by the head. “With these? These puppets.” It squeezes, and the mask breaks off, exposing the sparking wire beneath, before throwing it to the floor. “There’s only one path to peace. The Avengers’ extinction.” 

Thor has clearly had enough, because he throws Mjolnir, smashing Ultron against the wall.

But the thing isn’t dead, not yet. Its voice is low and broken, but it rumbles, “I had strings, but now I’m free.”

There’s a moment of complete silence as the light goes out from Ultron’s mask. Steve looks at Mattie, and has the insane and utterly inappropriate thought that this is how he wants to draw her, battle-flushed and giving no quarter.

The moment breaks, and Tony and Bruce race to the lab, and announce that Loki’s sceptre is gone. Surveillance shows a Legionnaire taking it, so Thor flies off after it, in full regalia. The rest of them are about to disperse, to clean wounds and change out of fancy clothes.

“Wait, are we _not_ going to talk about the blind chick busting out the kung fu moves?” says Clint, pointing at Mattie.

Everyone still in the room freezes, and all eyes turn to Mattie in her torn dress, her glasses miraculously still on her face.

“Uh, Mattie?” says Steve.

She waves a resigned hand. “Go ahead,” she sighs.

“Uh, everyone, Daredevil. Daredevil…everyone” he says.

Natasha and Maria both look smug. Clint, Rhodey, and Helen look between Mattie and Steve. In the silence, Mattie waves her hand. “Hi.”

“You’re serious?” says Helen.

“ _She’s_ Daredevil?” says Rhodey.

“You’re dating _Daredevil_ and you didn’t tell me?” says Clint.

“I wouldn’t say dating -“ starts Steve.

“So…actually blind?” cuts in Rhodey.

“ _Yes_ , actually blind,” Mattie snaps.

“So how do you -“

“OK!” says Steve in his most commanding voice. “Yes, she’s Daredevil, yes, she’s blind, now can we all focus on the bigger issue right now? Everyone meet in the lab in fifteen for a status update.” There’s some hesitation, so he snaps, “Dismissed,” and they disperse until Steve is left with Mattie in the wrecked common room.

“Wow,” she says dryly. “I finally get to hear the Captain America voice.”

“Sorry about that.”

She shrugs. “Not like I could come up with a decent excuse. I guess if I can’t trust the Avengers, who can I trust?” She doesn’t look happy, though.

Steve looks around at the wreckage.

“You did good back there,” he says. “I mean, we owe you one.”

She shakes her head. “I was just doing what everyone else was.”

“Yeah, but…it was nice. Having you on our side.”

She smiles. “Yeah,” she says. “I mean, magic hammers and killer robots - you guys throw the best parties.”

He laughs and puts his hand on her arm.

“You hurt?”

“Wouldn’t mind an ice pack,” she says. “And I think Tony owes me a new dress.”

“We can arrange that.”

She limps when she moves, but doesn’t complain, so Steve takes her to the infirmary to grab an ice pack, and they run into Maria, who is limping as well, trying to find a pair of tweezers. Then they’re all assembled in the lab, and Clint opens with:

“Did you know Steve’s girlfriend is Daredevil?”

“Not actually my girlfriend,” says Steve quickly.

“Really?” says Bruce.

“Huh. That explains the kung fu,” says Tony distractedly.

“It’s not kung fu,” mutters Mattie.

“Not important,” snaps Steve at Tony. “What do we have?”

Tony, Bruce, and Natasha brief the rest of them on the wake of destruction Ultron has left behind in their computers, and the terrifying possibilities now that Ultron is loose. Then Tony shows the hologram of JARVIS’ shattered programming, and Steve feels a pang of loss. JARVIS was one of them, he’d been a comforting presence and an incredible ally for the past year. And he’s gone.

Thor arrives, and picks up Tony by the throat, but drops him before he can do any damage. And then Helen asks the question Steve’s been thinking all along.

“Why’s it trying to kill us?”

And Tony starts laughing, and they’re all sniping at each other, and Tony tries to defend himself by pulling out the “Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?”

“No, it’s never come up,” says Rhodey sarcastically.

“Saved New York?” continues Tony. Steve sees Mattie’s face set in a dark expression. “Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We’re standing three hundred feet below it. We’re the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the livelong day, but that up there, that’s…That’s the endgame. How were you guys planning on beating that?”

“Together,” says Steve, with absolute conviction.

“We’ll lose,” says Tony.

“Then we’ll do that together, too.” There’s a moment between him and Tony, and Steve isn’t sure who wins. He breaks eye contact, and orders the team to start working on finding Ultron.

Steve won’t be much use in the search for Ultron, so he takes Mattie home. It’s only a few blocks, anyway, and he needs to get out of the Tower, clear his head. And he needs to bite the bullet.

“They want you to join the team,” he says in a rush, as they’re crossing 7th.

“What?”

“They want you to be an Avenger.”

She pauses. “And what about you?” she says quietly.

“I’d…I’d like you to join, too.” She doesn’t say anything, just leans her head against the car window. “You’re one of the best hand-to-hand fighters I’ve ever seen, and you can clearly keep your head in a melee, and I…I like the idea of having you at my back.” She hasn’t responded yet. “You don’t have to make a decision tonight, just…think about it?”

It’s quiet for a moment.

“Do you know what I was thinking, when Tony was talking about standing under the hole in the sky?”

“No.”

“That was one day for you. One day, where you saved all of us, and we all owe you for that, but it was one day. I’ve been living with the consequences of that day for three years. My city has been living with that for three years, and we’re still bleeding.” She pauses. “Killer robots, alien invasions, that’s not really my speed. The world needs people like you up there to deal with that. But it needs people like me down here, too.”

Steve nods, and then wonders if she can tell.

“I just nodded. Do you…can you tell that sort of thing?”

She chuckles. “Yeah, I can.”

“How?”

“I was blinded when I was nine. Chemical spill. Except it didn’t just blind me, it also enhanced all of my other senses.”

“Enhanced how?”

She shrugs. “I’ve been known to be able to smell a man’s cologne three floors down, hear conversations even further.”

“That how you dodged those bullets? You heard them coming?”

“No, bullets are too fast to hear, but I can feel the change in air pressure, temperature.”

“Handy.”

“It’s been useful. Once or twice,” she says dryly. Steve pulls up outside her building. “It’s easier when it’s a human firing, I can hear the heartbeat, anticipate behavior.”

“You can hear heartbeats?”

“Why is that the thing everyone gets weirded out by?”

“I’m not…weirded. I…That’s incredible.” _What’s my heart telling you?_

She smiles sadly. “Not everyone thinks that.”

“They’re wrong. What you’ve got - it’s a gift.” She makes a skeptical noise. “What can you tell from a heartbeat?”

She leans over and presses her fingertips against his chest. “I know that you have the lowest resting heart rate I’ve ever heard. At least, until I met Thor. And it doesn’t speed up when you fight.” And she leans forward, until her lips are an inch away from Steve’s. “But it does when I do that.” And she grins.

Steve slides his hand around the back of her head and kisses her. It gets heated quickly, his hand sliding over her, and up under her skirt, until she gasps, “Do you want to come up?”

“Yes.” After everything tonight, the party, the alcohol, the flirting, the fighting, he _wants_ this.

They stumble through her building, up six flights of stairs, mostly attached at the mouth. Mattie has him by the front of his shirt, pulling it out of his pants, sliding her hands under it. Then they’re at her door, and she fumbles with her keys from her purse as he kisses the back of her neck, and they’re through, and she’s shoving him against the wall, her tongue in his mouth. He manages to unzip her dress as she kicks the door shut, and it drops to the floor as she grabs the front of his shirt and pushes him backwards into her apartment. It’s filled with a dim purple light from a billboard across the street, and Mattie doesn’t seem to believe in curtains (why would she?), so he takes her in, in her bra and underwear, as she stalks towards him. He catches a glimpse of a pair of scars over her breasts before she closes the gap, and she’s on him again, unbuttoning his shirt in a frenzy as she maneuvers him backwards. His shirt is on the floor by the time the backs of his knees hit the bed, and he sits, pulling her on top of him.

He unhooks her bra as she straddles his lap, pressing his mouth to her breasts as she grinds her hips against his groin, the friction making him hard. He feels her nails against his scalp, and lifts his face to kiss her, hungrily. He wraps his arms around her and rolls her onto her back, but she has other ideas, and her legs twist, and he smacks into the mattress, looking up at her. She smiles, and it’s a knife in the darkness, sharp and white, and this is Daredevil, about to eat him alive.

He tries to sit up, but she pushes down on his chest. She moves down his body, unbuckling his belt and pulling off his pants and boxers, and she slips out of her underwear while she’s at it. She straddles his thighs again, and leans over him to reach into the bedside table for a condom, her breasts brushing against his chest. He runs a hand up her back, and feels the ridge of a scar on her skin, but she takes his hand and pushes it down against the pillow.

“Stay,” she growls in a voice that goes straight to his cock.

He stays.

She strokes his cock, and Steve doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything sexier. Then she rolls the condom onto him, and grasps him, mounting him and sinking down on him with a sigh. He strokes her thigh, and she grins, moving faster than he thought she could, pinning both his hands on either side of his head, her fingers laced with his.

“I said stay,” she says, and she rolls her hips, making him moan, but she swallows the sound with her mouth on his. She rides him like that, her weight pressing down on his hands, her hips moving hard and fast, and he tries to meet her, thrusting up into her, until she comes with a cry, her face pressed into his neck, her muscles tightening like an electrical shock.

She lets go of his hands as she catches her breath, and he moves them lazily over her, her hair, her back, down to her ass. He sits up slowly, holding her in place, and she puts her arms around his neck as she starts to move again, letting his hands move her hips and set the rhythm. He presses his face against her chest, feeling the line of a scar against his lips, and breathes in the scent of her skin until he comes inside her.

He only means to hold her for a few minutes after he cleans himself up, but he realizes that she’s already falling asleep, and he’s halfway there himself.

“I have to go,” he whispers.

“Right,” she says, shaking herself awake. “Murder bot. Saving the world.”

“Something like that.”

He slips out of bed and starts collecting his clothes. As he makes his tour of the apartment, he picks up her clothes and lays them neatly at the foot of her bed.

“I put your clothes on the end of the bed,” he says as he finishes buttoning his shirt.

“Thanks.” She’s sitting up in bed, the sheet wrapped around her. She holds out her hand, and he takes it. “Be careful.”

“You too. Get some sleep, Daredevil,” he says, kissing her.

He lets himself out, drives back to the Tower, and showers. He can’t afford to think about her, not now.

He has to be Captain America.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue taken from _Avengers: Age of Ultron_.


	4. After Ultron

The edges of Steve’s vision are pulsing red, and the music in the dance hall is loud. There are camera flashes, and laughter, and he knows that something is wrong, but he can’t tell what it is. Then Peggy Carter is there, and she says, “Ready for our dance?”

_Always_.

He doesn’t know how long they dance. It could be just a moment, it could be hours.

Then something flashes red, and it’s not Peggy, and it’s not a dance hall. It’s Mattie Murdock, and it’s Fogwell’s Gym, there’s Motown playing over the speakers, and she’s laughing as they spar. He catches glimpses of scars on pale skin as she flips, and he lands on his back, her knees on his shoulders, and she smiles that Daredevil smile.

Then he’s back on an abandoned ship, and Bruce is rampaging through a city, and everything has gone to hell.

At Clint’s farm, he watches Clint and Laura, and wonders if he could ever have a life like this. _Not if you want it with her_. She’s Daredevil, she’d never be happy staying out of the fray, staying safe. But he wonders if a home to call their own, if that would be too much to ask.

Then he remembers that he’s getting ahead of himself. For all that he thinks about her, she’s not his girlfriend, not even…whatever they call it, these days.

For a moment, he indulges himself, and imagines making love to her on their couch while one of her records plays. It’s a nice fantasy.

After Sokovia, the Avengers move upstate, and he’s not in the city much anymore. Training the new Avengers takes up time, and there are a few leads on Bucky that he tries to follow, and it’s a little while before he finds himself alone with Wanda.

Her powers aren’t very well defined; they seem to keep finding new things that she can do, which is both exciting and terrifying. But he’s been wondering one thing since that fight on the Wakandan border.

“Can I ask you a question?” he says. Wanda pauses over the coffee she’s brewing.

“Of course.”

“You remember the fight we had with Ultron? At Klawe’s base?”

“Yes.”

“Do you…do you know what we saw? When you messed with our heads?”

She shakes her head.  

“I…I did not have as much control, then. I made you see…what frightens you. I was not very specific.”

“Right. Thanks.” Steve pushes off the counter where he was leaning. “We should work on that, you know, see if you can get better control.”

“Vision, he is helping me. The Mind Stone is very powerful.” She pours two cups of coffee and hands him one.

“That’s good. That’s really good.” Steve hasn’t asked what’s between Wanda and Vision; whatever it is, it seems to work for them. “Thanks for the coffee.”

He’s not afraid. He’s not.

He has an alert on the computer in his room that notifies him whenever Daredevil makes the news. It’s alarmingly frequent, but thankfully mostly about her taking out petty criminals. Nothing big, like Fisk. No stories about her being injured. He watches shaky Youtube videos of her in action, and it’s not quite as impressive as it is in person, but it’s still beautiful.

He sees her name, her real name, connected to the Frank Castle case, and watches as the defense falls apart, and she’s blamed for it.

He’s not afraid.

Tensions are running high in the Mansion, after Sokovia. Talk about regulation floats around them, and it’s hard to pretend that they’re not fighting amongst themselves. Whenever Tony shows up, Steve tries to swallow the passive-aggressive comments, but sometimes they slip out, and he and Tony wind up arguing again.

In December, his computer notifies him about a new Daredevil incident. This one isn’t like the others; the eyewitnesses report _ninjas_ , of all things, fighting Daredevil. Hostages had been taken, Daredevil had rescued them. Frank Castle was seen there. Several dead (not surprising, if the Punisher was there).

He calls Maria about it.

“Checking up on your vigilante girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he says. “I just - they’re saying an army of _ninjas_ , isn’t that something we should be looking into?”

And Maria, because she’s Maria, smiles. “Already on it. I’ll send you what we’ve got.”

The report is disappointingly thin. Maria’s people have identified the ninjas as part of a sect called the Hand, with ties to the Yakuza, but that’s about it. No word on what they were after.

He’s not afraid.

He calls Mattie.

He gets her voicemail.

He tries again the next day. Then again a few days later. Then he starts wondering if this constitutes harassment.

He spends Christmas in DC, visiting the VA hospital with Sam. He stops by to wish Peggy Carter a merry Christmas, and runs into some of her grandchildren, who tell him how much they appreciate him coming.

“Actually,” says one of Peggy’s grandsons (Mike, he thinks), “we’ve met before.” Steve tries to place him, but can’t. “Battle of New York. It’s OK, I wouldn’t expect you to remember. I’m with the NYPD, we were first on the scene during the battle.”

And it clicks, and Steve remembers the two cops, the ones he’d ordered to set up the perimeter. Mike had been one of them.

“Right! Right. Good to see you all in one piece,” he says.

“Hey, we wouldn’t be if it weren’t for you,” says Mike, clapping his shoulder.

“A lot of people could say the same for you.” Steve rests a hand on Mike’s shoulder, and Mike glows. “You’re as much a hero as any of us.”

Mike helps Steve bring up coffees for the rest of the family from the cafeteria.

“Seriously,” he’s saying, “my buddy Brett, he gets all the good Daredevil stories, but Captain America visiting my Nana is totally going to blow his out of the water.”

“Daredevil stories?”

“Yeah, he’s like her Commissioner Gordon these days. He bitches about it, but he loves it.”

“What do you think about her?”

“Daredevil?” Mike shrugs. “I mean, I’d have to try to arrest her if I ever ran into her. She’d probably kick my ass, too. But she’s…ours, you know? Nice to know _someone’s_ looking out for us.”

_Who’s looking out for her?_

“Against ninjas?” Steve says.

“Yeah, _that_ was weird.”

He tries to call Mattie again on the drive back to New York, but only gets her voicemail.

“Change of plans,” he tells Sam.

Sam drops him off at Mattie’s apartment, and continues back to the Mansion. Steve climbs the six flights of stairs and knocks on the door, but there’s no answer. He can’t hear anyone moving inside, either, so he waits ten minutes, then walks over to the Tower.

Steve leaves his bag in his suite, and finds Maria in her office, because the woman never takes a day off.

“If you were trying to find Daredevil, could you?”

Maria raises her eyebrows. “You know, this could technically be considered stalking.”

“I’m worried about her.”

“Because of the ninja thing?”

“Yeah.”

Maria lets him stand in awkward silence for a moment. “I can position a Legionnaire to patrol over Hell’s Kitchen, send you the coordinates when she’s spotted.”

“Thanks.”

The Legionnaire sends him to an alley where Daredevil is fighting (beating up) five men. One tries to run, and Steve punches him, knocking him out. Daredevil jumps and kicks the last man into the wall, and he slides to the ground.

“Shouldn’t you be concerned about condoning vigilante activity, Captain?” Daredevil says, and the voice…it’s not hers. It’s deeper, rougher, and if Steve finds it _very_ attractive, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s not Mattie in front of him. Not entirely.

“I just saw a woman being attacked by five men, and tried to help,” he says innocently.

“Six.”

“What?”

She jerks her head towards the dumpster next to her. “Six men.”

Steve steps up next to the dumpster, and peers in. There’s an unconscious man in there, all right.

“I stand corrected,” he says. When he looks up, she’s already turning to walk away. “Wait!” She stops. “I wanted to talk to you.” She doesn’t say anything. “Can we go somewhere? Please?”

She turns her face to him, her mouth tight under the mask. “You know where to find me,” she says, and then she’s gone.

Steve swallows his annoyance that he already _tried_ her apartment, and heads over. She opens the door when he knocks this time, dressed in a hoodie and jeans.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” she says. She steps aside to let him in. She looks like hell, drawn and haunted and tired.

“I came by earlier,” he says. “I don’t think you were here.”

“No, I’ve been…out all day.” _Being Daredevil_. She sits down in one of the armchairs, and he sits on the couch facing her.

“I tried to call.”

“Yeah, I haven’t really been paying attention to my phone these days. What do you want, Steve?” Her voice is hollow, and there’s a coldness to her that Steve doesn’t recognize.

“I heard about the ninja thing. I wanted to make sure you were OK.”

She hesitates. She’s not OK, and Steve knows she’ll be damned before she admits it.

“I’m fine,” she says. “Thanks for asking.”

“You know, you can always give me a call if you need…anything.”

She shakes her head. “You guys are in enough trouble these days without dealing with my shit.”

“If your shit is an army of ninjas, yeah, we can help you deal with that.”

“The way you helped Sokovia?” she snaps, and Steve recoils. “Sorry, that was - I shouldn’t have said that.”

Steve takes a long look at her.

“What’s wrong, Mattie?” _What happened to you?_ She doesn’t answer, just fiddles with the upholstery on the armchair. He gets up and sits on the coffee table, his knees brushing hers. “You can talk to me, you know.”

He reaches out, but she flinches away.

“No,” she says. “No, you don’t get to do this to me.”

“Do what?”

She throws herself to her feet, putting distance between them. “You don’t get to drop in on my life whenever you want to get laid, and then pretend that you care about what happened in between.”

“I do care!” he says. “Jesus Christ, Mattie, is that what you think of me?” She’s silent, her arms crossed over her chest. “Is that what you think you are to me?”

“How the hell should I know?”

And Steve realizes what he’s been afraid of, all this time. He’s been afraid of this precarious, fragile thing between them, been afraid that if he spoke its name, it would disappear.

He stands up and approaches her slowly, reaching out and putting his hands on her arms. She tenses, but doesn’t pull away.

“I care about you. A lot. And I…I shouldn’t have left it so long to tell you. But this is what I want. You and me, I want _this_. If you do, too.”

And for a moment, he thinks she’ll raise her face to his and kiss him, but then she says, “You have the _shittiest_ timing, Steve.” And she steps out of his grasp, and sits down on the couch.

“What do you mean?” All he can imagine is that she’s seeing someone else.

But she gives a mirthless chuckle, and spreads her arms.

“I’m a goddamn mess, Steve. I have a spectacular ability to fuck up anything good in my life. My firm is gone, my career is basically over, Foggy and Karen won’t talk to me, and -“ She breaks off, as if the last thing is too terrible to put into words. “I’m poison,” she says. “You should run as far away from me as you can.” And Steve just has to laugh. “What’s so funny?” She looks like she’s about to punch him.

“No, I’m sorry, it’s just - you remember who I live with?”

“Yeah, the Avengers. Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” she says bitterly.

“Yeah, Sam calls us Earth’s Mightiest Psych Ward.” Her brow furrows, and Steve sits down in the armchair. “Seriously, you’ve met most of us. We’re monsters and misfits and freaks who can only keep it together when we’ve got something to fight. You think you’re a mess? Come up to the Mansion, you’ll fit right in.”

“You’re not a mess.”

Steve leans forward, and remembers what Ultron called him all those months ago. “I’m just better at hiding it. But the truth is…I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t have something to fight.”

She reaches out, and he takes her hand. “Yeah,” she says. “I know that feeling.”

He’s afraid to break the moment, just holding her hand, but then she adjusts her grip, and pulls him forward. He slides over to the couch, and wraps his arms around her, with her head resting on his chest. For a long moment, they stay there in the quiet, and Steve remembers that she can hear heartbeats, and hopes she likes the sound of his.

“Why me?” she whispers. “Why bother with me?”

“Because…you’re the girl who gave me a twelve-hour playlist and a two-page long list of movies. Because you’re the girl who asked me about what Bucky was like _before_. Because you’re the girl who fought a killer robot instead of staying safe. Because you turned down joining the Avengers because you’re needed here.” And he realizes that his shirt is getting damp where her face is pressed against it, and hears her sniff. “Oh, uh…” He looks around for a box of tissues, and can only see paper towel on the kitchen counter. “I’ll get you…” He runs to the kitchen and grabs the roll. “Here.”

“Sorry,” she says, taking a paper towel and blowing her nose. “It’s just… it’s been a really _shitty_ couple of months.”

“Hey,” he says, putting his arms around her. “Go ahead.” So she cries, and he holds her, and when it’s over, she curls against him, and eventually falls asleep on top of him. He picks her up and carries her to her bed, and tucks them both in fully clothed, her head nestled on his chest.

When he wakes up, the winter sun is filling the apartment, and he can hear Mattie in the kitchen. He looks over, and it looks like she’s cutting up fruit.

“Hey,” she says.

“How’d you know I was awake?”

“Breathing and heartrate, mostly,” she says lightly. She seems more relaxed, even if there’s still a haunted quality to her.

“What’re you making?”

“Just some oatmeal. Want some?”

“Sure.” He sits up, and tastes his own morning breath. “Uh, do you have some mouthwash I could use?”

“Yeah, in the bathroom.”

He rinses out his mouth, then joins her in the kitchen.

“So, I was thinking,” he says as she passes him a bowl of oatmeal. “Do you want to come up to the Mansion for a few days? I mean, we’re going to have a New Year’s Eve party, and it would be…really nice if you were there.”

She smiles sadly. “Thanks, but I can’t. I can’t leave Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Why not?”

“People get hurt if I’m not here.”

“You know something specific is going to happen?”

“No.”

“Is Hell’s Kitchen going to blow up?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then it sounds like any other city in the world.” He puts his hand on her cheek. “You burn out, you’ll never be any use to them.” He presses a kiss to her forehead.

“OK,” she says. “But just a few days.”

So she packs a bag and he takes a car from the Tower and drives her up to the Mansion. As they’re leaving Manhattan, she says quietly, “I’ve never been out of the city.”

“Me neither, until I joined the Army,” Steve says.

“Describe it to me?”

So he does. The way the city gives way to nature, how the landscape looks with its fine dusting of snow. He describes the Mansion as they come through the gates. He describes the inside as he guides her around, until they’re at the door to his suite.

“Uh, we can have a guest suite made up for you, if you want, or, uh, this is mine, and you’re welcome to stay here if you want…?”

And, thank God, she takes his hand and says, “I’ll stay here.”

Over dinner, Sam takes one look at her, and takes her under his (figurative) wing. When Steve has work to do, Sam hangs out with Mattie. Steve usually finds them in the gym, bantering and sparring. At one point, Sam makes a joke about her being a ninja after she’s flipped him onto the floor, and Steve watches the haunted expression bleed back into her face.

“Not a ninja,” she says, and her voice shakes infinitesimally.

Any time anyone mentions “the ninja thing,” Mattie gets that look on her face, and won’t answer questions about what happened. The third time it happens, Sam glances at Steve with a knowing look.

Steve finally gets to draw her. He snaps pictures of her for reference, and sketches while she’s curled up next to him in the evenings, FRIDAY playing music for them. His favorite is of her in the gym, standing over Sam, the sharp Daredevil grin on her face.

She doesn’t smile, not the bright one that could stop his heart.

They don’t have sex, the first few nights. They kiss, but Mattie doesn’t take it any further, and Steve doesn’t want to push her. But it’s nice, sharing a bed with her, waking up with his arms around her.

Steve watches her spar with Sam, who has the wing pack on. After he hits the ground for the fourth time, he complains about getting his ass kicked.

“Well, my dad always said, it’s not how you hit the mat,” Mattie teases, “It’s how you get back up.”

On New Year’s Eve, when Steve is looking for them to have lunch, he finds them sitting on the floor in the gym, talking quietly. Sam has his hand on Mattie’s arm, and she looks drained. Sam looks up at Steve, and gets up.

“What’s going on?” says Steve.

“Uh, I think you two should talk,” says Sam. “She’s got…a lot of stuff you should know about.”

So Sam leaves them, and Steve sits down in front of her and takes her hand.

“Hey,” he says. “Everything all right?”

It’s a stupid question, because it’s obviously not. But she shakes her head anyway, and tells him about everything that happened to her since Ultron, from Frank Castle shooting her in the head to her ex-girlfriend dying in her arms. And if Steve can’t wrap his head around some of the things she says, he realizes that this is not the time, that she just needs to talk and talk and talk.

And when she’s done, he still has her by the hand, and the gym is quiet around them.

“Steve?”

“I think…I think you’re so strong to carry all this. And I think you don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”

_She gets back up_.

The New Year’s party is in full swing. Everyone has tacitly agreed not to talk about regulation, so, for once, they’re all just…happy. Clint brought the family, and Wanda is making alarmingly adorable cooing noises over baby Nathaniel, who tries to grab at her hair.

“Already a ladies’ man,” says Clint proudly, letting her hold the baby.

Mattie asks where Tony is, and there’s an awkward pause.

“He’s in Vegas,” says Rhodey neutrally. “He does a thing there every year.”

He did send a few cases of champagne, which is flowing freely. Mattie declines a glass.

“Been drinking a lot, recently,” she says quietly. “Should probably cut back.”

Sam pats her shoulder and gets her a glass of juice.

Natasha tells Laura and Mattie the story of Sam’s run-in over the summer with “Ant-Man” (a.k.a. “Hi-I’m-Scott”). Laura’s laughing, while Mattie looks thoughtful.

“I mean, it’s an interesting question of how would you fight someone who can literally shrink out of your range?” she muses.

“You’re not serious!” laughs Laura.

Mattie shrugs. “It’s interesting.”

“Theoretically, all you need is one good step,” says Natasha, making a squashing gesture.

“And theoretically, he can’t move very fast when he’s shrunk,” says Mattie. “I mean…little legs…” She makes a running motion with her fingers.

“Yeah, _theoretically_ ,” says Sam, glaring at Rhodey, who looks not at all sorry about sending the video out to the other Avengers. “ _You_ try stepping on the little bastard when he’s coming at you.”

As midnight approaches, and Wanda has a little too much champagne, she starts making red-glowing decorations (some of which…explode? Implode?), which leads to Steve implementing a “no powers when drunk” rule.

“And that goes for suits and weapons!” he says, when Sam and Clint look a little too pleased with themselves for not having literal powers. Mattie just smiles like a cat. “Don’t get me started on you,” Steve says, putting his arms around her.

“Can’t turn it off,” she says.

Midnight comes (“Happy 2016!”), and Steve kisses Mattie. The kids have gone bed, and the party is still going. Clint begs Mattie to take him parkouring. Natasha mixes some dangerous cocktails. For some reason, almost everyone has the urge to hug Vision.

And Steve asks Mattie to dance when something slow comes up on the playlist.

In the morning, Steve tries to get out of bed to go make coffee, but Mattie makes a noise of complaint, and throws her leg over his.

“Nope, you’re warm, you’re staying here.”

“Yeah, but coffee…” he mumbles into her hair.

“Too comfy…” She shifts more of her weight onto him, and tilts her head up, and he kisses her, morning breath be damned.

And this time, she deepens the kiss, and her leg slips between his, and her hand comes up to his face. The kiss ends, and she leans her forehead against his. He puts his arm around her waist, but she takes his hand, and slides it under her t-shirt ( _his_ t-shirt, she stole it from him), up to her breast. He presses gently, feels her breathe, then grazes his thumb over her nipple, and she sighs.

He rolls her onto her back, and pulls off her t-shirt, dipping his mouth to her breasts. She hisses when he squeezes her nipple between his teeth, hums contentedly when he licks at it, and moans when he grabs her breast hard.

He works his way down her body, over her stomach, pulling off her underwear, until her legs are open in front of him. He’s only done this once before (and that was ages ago, in DC), but he understands the theory, and he wants to make her feel loved.

He presses his face between her legs, and licks at her clit. She tastes of salt and musk and something dark and beautiful. The first lick gets a gasp, and her breath turns ragged as he continues, and then she’s laughing.

If he weren’t embarrassed, he’d love the sound of her laugh.

“Sorry! Sorry!” she’s saying. “It’s just…you haven’t done that before, have you?”

“Only once,” he mumbles.

She takes his face in her hands.

“You’re adorable,” she says, and she’s smiling, _that_ smile, and maybe the embarrassment is worth it. “C’mere.” He comes up so that they’re lying facing each other. “OK, we should probably start with the basics?” She takes his hand, and presses his fingertip to her lips.

“I know the basics,” he says defensively.

“Mmm,” she hums skeptically. “OK, you know what you were doing with my nipples?”

“Yeah.”

“Try thinking of it more…like that? You know, changing it up a little? And like…” She slides his hand down between her legs, and he strokes her clit. “…that, too.” _Oh_. He swirls his finger around her clit. “Yeah, just like that,” she sighs.

He grins and kisses her, and dives down between her legs. This time, he varies the strokes of his tongue, adds in a little suck and a gentle nip, and he’s rewarded with her moaning and gasping, until he feels her come against him. He wipes his face on the sheet before climbing up to her.

“Better?” he asks.

“Definitely,” she says, and she smiles.

_She gets back up_.

Steve goes into the city on weekends to stay with her; it’s nice to get away from the Mansion, away from the squabbling that’s increasingly frequent. Some nights, she’ll stay in with him, but most nights, he sits up reading Avengers reports while she’s out as Daredevil. He works his way through her record collection on those nights, until she comes home, and, more often than not, strips out of her suit and drags him to bed.

They both have nightmares. He dreams of flying cities and seven-foot-tall robots and falling from the sky, and she dreams of swords and sais and hands around her throat. It gets better, when they can wake up and find they’re not alone.

Sam comes down some weekends, and he and Mattie will have lunch together without Steve. He considers it private, so he doesn’t ask what they talk about, but he thinks that it’s helping.

Mattie can still barely say Foggy’s name. She dances around it, calling him “my old partner” whenever she has to refer to him. Karen’s easier to talk about, even if Mattie still looks sad when she mentions her.

Steve finds himself referring to Tony as “my old teammate.”

They have their first fight around the end of the winter, when Frank Castle stumbles down Mattie’s stairs at four in the morning, covered in blood that may or may not be his. Steve glowers at them from the bedroom while Mattie strips Frank out of his armored vest, the one with the skull painted on it. Frank looks at Steve with a grin on his face.

“You fucking Captain America, Red?” he says.

“Hey!” snaps Steve.

“It’s OK,” says Mattie. She turns back to Frank, and throws a wet washcloth with perfect accuracy at his face. “And it’s none of your business who I’m fucking.”

They keep on like that, an easy bluntness peppered with language so colorful it would make Clint Barton blush, while Mattie pulls out a first aid kit and runs her hand over Frank’s chest. Steve tries to force down the twinges of jealousy, but it’s hard when Frank smiles and says quietly, “Better than an x-ray” when Mattie tells him his rib is fractured, or when she grumbles “the only medical experience I have is having this _done_ to me,” and Frank responds, “I trust you, Red.”

Frank is gone by sunrise, and Mattie sits down heavily on the couch.

“What the hell are you doing with him?” Steve barks, Captain America inching into his voice.

“He needed help,” she says.

“He _needs_ to be in jail.”

“I owe him,” she says, her voice full of steel. “And he has nowhere else to go.”

“Jesus Christ, Mattie, he’s a killer!”

“You really want to go there, Steve? So am I, and so are you, for the record.”

“I’m a soldier.”

“What _army_ are you part of? Face it, you’re a vigilante, you’re just like us, just with better toys.”

And she sounds so much like Tony that he grabs his coat and storms out, back to the Tower.

It takes him most of the day to cool down, and he makes his way back to her apartment around dinnertime. She looks genuinely surprised when she opens the door.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she says.

“Takes more than that to get rid of me,” he says. And the look on her face breaks his heart, like she didn’t know how to hope anymore.

They sit. They talk. He tells her that Frank’s presence in her life scares him. She tells him about her bizarre history with the man.

“In a weird way, he _likes_ me,” she says. _It’s not that weird_.

They talk more, showing their scars and open wounds. They talk about vigilantes, about regulation, about being the ones who can carry the weight. About fear. About hope. About the prices they’ve paid, the friends and lovers they’ve buried, and the ones they’ve left behind.

When they’re all talked out, he pulls her in, and kisses her, softly, gently, just feeling the warmth of her against him. It goes on for a long time, and then she leads him by the hand to her bedroom. Their clothes slide off, and she’s underneath him as he kisses her neck, grinding slowly against her. She slips a hand between them to stroke him, and then he puts on a condom and enters her, slow, tender, her hands clinging to his back, her legs wrapped around his. He keeps it slow, making it last, and he’s gotten to know her body well enough that he can keep her there in the moment with him, savoring the feeling of him inside her. He might say “I love you.” She might say it back.

_She gets back up_.

In the spring, Mattie is contacted by the executor of Elektra Natchios’ estate. Elektra, it turns out, left Mattie a significant part of her fortune. Mattie’s face is unreadable as she tells Steve.

“What are you going to do with it?” She can start her own practice, on her own. Or she can invest, and live comfortably without working. Be Daredevil, and not have to worry about other responsibilities.

“I want to do something _good_ ,” she says.

She reaches out to her friend Claire, and together, they start the Storefront Clinic in Hell’s Kitchen: free medical care and legal assistance. The Avengers donate some money, and Steve makes sure that he’s seen supporting the clinic.

He gets a call from Karen Page at the Bulletin about it, and he gives her the usual “supporting everyday heroes” speech.

“We want to make sure that people understand that heroes don’t just wear suits of armor or carry a shield,” he says.

“Or billy clubs,” says Karen. _Oh. She knows_.

“Or billy clubs,” he says. “Off the record?”

“Sure.”

“She’s trying, Karen.”

There’s a pause. “I know,” she says.

“Have she and Foggy talked yet?”

“No. I’m not getting in the middle of that, and neither should you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He finds out about the _other_ side of the clinic’s operation when he goes down one evening, trying to find Mattie, thinking it’s too early for her to be out as Daredevil. She’s there, but dressed in her Daredevil suit, while Claire bends over a teenaged boy stripped to the waist and screaming in agony. Mattie is saying something about toxins when she breaks off, and pushes Steve out the door.

“You can’t be here, Steve.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s one of us, Steve, please, you need to go.”

“One of -“ _Vigilantes_. “He can’t be more than sixteen!”

“Fifteen,” she says sadly. “He’s fifteen.”

At home (and when did her apartment become home?), he checks the news online, and there are reports of Daredevil and Spider-man fighting some deranged lunatic who had been poisoning people. He calls Maria, and she sends him _her_ report on the incident, which seems to indicate that Spider-man was directly targeted.

Mattie appears at the top of the stairs, and takes off her helmet.

“How’s he doing?” Steve asks.

“He’s out of the woods. Claire’s taking care of him until he can go home.”

“Spider-man, right?”

“Yeah.” There’s a pause. “Are you going to yell at me for endangering a child?”

“ _Did_ you endanger him?”

She shakes her head. “He does that himself. I just try to keep him alive as much as I can.”

And Steve realizes that Daredevil is a beacon, for as much as she tries to play the lone wolf, she draws people to her, and she takes responsibility for them. Punisher, Spider-man, even Steve himself, she’ll protect them as fiercely as she protects her city. And Steve’s pretty sure that they’ll protect her, too.

And Steve will be here for her, when she’s done out there. Because the world might need both of them, Captain America in the sunlight, and Daredevil in the shadows, but they need each other just as much.

They’re back at Fogwell’s; Steve in the ring with Sam while Mattie stretches. She casually lifts her leg above her head, and Sam’s fist connects with Steve’s jaw.

“You OK?” she says mischievously.

“That was a dirty trick, Murdock!” 

“And yet, you fell for it,” she says innocently.

“You’re ganging up on me,” Steve says, pointing at the two of them.

“What, Captain America can’t handle the Falcon and Daredevil team-up?” She leans on the ropes.

“Told you, girl,” says Sam, “we’re unstoppable.”

Mattie holds out her fist, and Sam bumps it.

“I can take you both,” says Steve.

“Big talk,” says Sam.

“I think he needs to prove it,” says Mattie.

“Get in here, then,” says Steve, and she rolls into the ring, bouncing up to her feet. _I’m in trouble_.

And Steve’s iPod is playing Johnny Cash over the speakers as he spars with Mattie and Sam, and Mattie’s smiling, and for a moment, the world is perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, all of you, for reading!


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